Lani Hall and Herb Alpert - Come What May

JUL 01 1980 · 12:00

Lani Hall and Herb Alpert - Come What May (1980) Director: Norman Seeff Era: MTV Launch Era (1980–1981) - Pre-MTV video production made for the album 'Blush'; one of 166 videos aired on MTV's inaugural broadcast day of August 1, 1981, representing the transitional moment between promotional film and the music video as mainstream art form. High. This video occupies a unique position as a confirmed MTV Day One broadcast artifact, a rare performance document of a real-life musical partnership (Hall and Alpert, married 1974), and an example of Norman Seeff's transitional work from still-session photography into promotional filmmaking. It bridges the bossa nova, pop tradition of the 1960s A&M Records roster with the early MTV era, and its warm, intimate aesthetic offers a counterpoint to the high-energy performance videos that would come to define the medium. As one of the lesser-known Day One MTV videos, it holds significant archival and historiographical value for researchers of early music television, A&M Records history, and the sociology of the husband-wife pop duet. Context: Released in 1980 on Lani Hall's album 'Blush,' 'Come What May' was produced by and featuring Herb Alpert, co-founder of A&M Records and Hall's husband since 1974, making the video a rare document of a real-life married couple's musical partnership at a major label. The song, written by David Lasley and Allee Willis and first recorded by Patti LaBelle in 1978, was repurposed as an intimate adult-contemporary duet reflecting the late-1970s shift toward warm, introspective pop balladry. Its placement as the 74th video on MTV's inaugural August 1, 1981 broadcast illustrates both the scarcity of available music videos in the early cable era and the eclectic, non-genre-segmented programming philosophy of early MTV, where it aired directly after Iron Maiden's 'Wrathchild.' Hall's trajectory from lead singer of Sérgio Mendes & Brasil '66 through A&M solo artist makes this video a document of the Brazilian bossa nova, influenced Hollywood pop lineage. Director notes: Seeff directed this promotional video for Lani Hall and Herb Alpert's 'Come What May,' from Hall's 1980 A&M Records album 'Blush,' on which Alpert guested. The video is consistent with Seeff's established methodology of co-creative sessions that foreground the spontaneous, intimate connection between artists. His background as both photographer and filmmaker is evident in the video's warm tungsten-lit, close-framed performance aesthetic, a visual language he developed beginning with his filmed session with Ike & Tina Turner in 1975. The video became historically significant as one of the 166 videos broadcast on MTV's launch day, August 1, 1981, as the 74th clip aired. Seeff's direction on this video predates his major commercial directing career of the 1990s and represents an early application of his session-film aesthetic to the music video format.