I Miss My MTV: The Iconic, Often Forgotten, Perfect Shakespeare's Sister
Shakespears Sister - Stay (Official Video) - YouTube
Taken from the album “Hormonally Yours” released February 17th 1992Listen to “Stay” ⇨ https://ShakespearsSister.lnk.to/StayFollow Shakespears SisterFacebook …
I conclude this lusty lady trilogy with the video that made me want to start writing about music videos.
Shakespeare’s sister is the side project of Bananarama Siobhan Fahey. She leans into her dark and theatric side and I love it. The album Hormonally Yours is a lovely entry into the often uncategorizeable forgotten music of the nineties.
The song even defines pop conventions: it’s a slow ballad for the first half, and then at the end becomes a freaking showstopper midway through. This video has my other favorite thing that rarely happens: The video acts out the story of the song.
The song is about pining for a loved one who either leaves on their own, who is taken from them against their will by illness or a sparkly demon. The video is all desire and lust, with two women fighting over the (literal) body of an unconscious man. We don’t know him, we know him as a Snow White Figure whose beauty attracts the Prince Charming and the Evil Witch, whose desire for them in the only thing that can save him.
Listen, if my hot alternative boyfriend was in a coma, I’d be crying at his side in a space station at the moon, singing and giving him spongebaths. I get it. (Love the styling and the braveness of short-haired women in the spotlight).
At minute, the creescendo of the song crashes into the entrance of…HER. Death incarnate, come to take the soul of hot boyfriend. In this earthly realm, she appears as a Real Housewife doing show choir. Her drunken poses and facial expressions should be taught at Julliard. When she starts descending the stairs and the musical interlude, CHILLS!
Death and Girlfriend struggle over the body of Hot Boyfriend, with Death committing to the part of chaotic monster. They do a tug of war of the body, but Boyfriend wakes up from the touch of Girlfriend, and they embrace. Did I mention he is hot? He has the alternative nineties grunge sickly look that is so good, but perhaps it is from the coma. Who knows.
Seeing she is defeated, Death, rolls her eyes, laughs to herself, and leaves to ascend back to her palace of glitter and glam squads.
Perfection.