Holding Out For A Hero

Yes, it's the Bonnie Tyler classic..and a special cover

When I discovered that Jim Steinman produced and co-wrote this song, I said, “Of course!” Steinman is the master of big, bombastic pop anthems. See his work with Meatloaf for the pinnacle of that art. This song has endured as a cultural phenom for 4 decades.

It starts with Bonnie Tyler being approached by Paramount Pictures to record one of the songs on their upcoming film soundtrack Footloose. She agreed on the condition that she work with Steinman, who had just produced her Faster Than The Speed of Night album and wrote Total Eslipse of the Heart for her. Already an established singer, she had listened to Steinman’s solo album Bad for Good and decided that she wanted to work with him. Her sound having been more country and blues until then, she recorded a rock demo to convince him.

Having agreed to the terms, Paramount turned to the movie’s screenwriter and composer Dean Pitchford to convince Steinman. Pitchford came up with the lyric “Where have all the good men gone and where are all the gods? Where's the streetwise Hercules to fight the rising odds?', figuring it would intregue Steinman. It worked. The opening is actually taken from a song from Steinman’s album, Stark Raving Love.

Tyler was brought in to see the rushes of where her song would go in the film. It’s the scene where they are playing chicken with tractors and the hero gets his shoelace caught so he can’t swerve. It cements him as a badass. Tyler brings all that passion and grit to her vocal.

The video doesn’t show any clips of the film. Instead, it places Tyler as a woman living alone in the wild west, with bandits dressed in black burning down her house and her pleading for someone to save her. (Why she stops on the ground so close to the house and why they move around her rather than grabbing her is a mystery left to 80s videos.) It intercuts with her standing in a flowing white dress atop the Grand Canyon and to a group of women all dressed in white. Halfway through the video we get shots of a man in white on a white horse, who spooks the bandits to run away, followed by the man in white. He appears in front of Tyler at the end of the video, having never shown his face.

This concepr was developed by the legendary Welsh music director Keith Williams, whose concept for The Buggles’ Video Killed the Radio Star vid drove all those weird videos at the beginning of the MTV era. As explained in this article:

For the video, Keith focused on the whipping noise heard in the chorus immediately after the line “I need a hero”, and developed it into something of a Western theme.

“There’s a whip sound, so we used neon whips. She’s in a cabin singing with a white horse riding to the rescue and a heavenly choir singing, because she’s singing for help from God. It’s a bit corny now, but it worked.”¹

Doug Dowdle was the lucky person to direct this idea. He had previously worked mostly with Rick Springfield but had directed for Irene Cara. Pitchford had written Cara’s songs in the movie Fame, so that’s probably the connection.

Ok, onto that special cover I promised. It’s Adam Lambert, off of his covers album High Drama. The arrangement is more electronic but still retains the driving 80s feel of the song. He uses his rock screams rather than Tyler’s soaring high notes but still retains the drama of the song. Of course the guy that sings with Queen can handle Steinman.

Director Jordan Rossi’s video of the song also plays with black and white. The beginning has the feel of the classic Robett Palmer videos, with the band in suits and heads covered in disco ball biking helmets. Halfway through, the helmets come off revealing extensive makeup and the band’s apparel changes to what one would more expect of Lambert - and of 80s glam rock, as Rossi explains in this article.

"The idea behind the video is to throw away homogeneity and celebrate individuality, whatever form that may take," explains Rossi. "Adam is the perfect collaborator. We've shot together before, so had a shorthand going into this one. But he was great at really driving ideas forward. He wanted to do something fashion-orientated with a glam rock and camp twist.

"I did a lot of visual research for this video with photographers like Jean-Paul Goude being a big source of inspiration for the editorial setups," he says. "We also gave a cheeky nod to Robert Palmer's legendary, and often imitated, videos [for Addicted To Love and others] but again with our own camp twist - with glitterball wearing robots.

"At every stage of the video Adam and I sought to subvert traditional conventions of music videos, fashion and pop iconography to create a piece of work that was fun, tongue-in-cheek and expressive with an incredible cast."

Enjoy your song(s) of the day!

1. Happy to have finally tracked down who’s responsible for all those crazy concepts!