Robert Palmer — Looking For Clues

JUL 01 1980 · 12:00

Robert Palmer — Looking For Clues (1980) Era: Post-Punk New Wave Transition (1980) - British art-rock pivot into electronic new wave, shot at the dawn of the music video era and broadcast on MTV's inaugural day Exceptionally high. This video occupies a unique position as a confirmed MTV Day One artifact, a pre-video-era surrealist production that anticipates the high-concept grammar of the MTV decade, and an early document of Robert Palmer's transition to electronic new wave. Its unconfirmed directorial provenance makes it an active archival research target. The deliberate slow pace, warm muted palette, and oversized-prop surrealism are visually distinctive and culturally legible as a 1980 British art-pop promo. Context: Released in October 1980 at the precise hinge point between 1970s art-rock and the oncoming new wave electronic era, 'Looking For Clues' represented a conscious stylistic rupture for Robert Palmer. Recorded at Compass Point Studios in Nassau with Talking Heads drummer Chris Frantz and featuring Gary Numan on keyboards, the track and its video embodied the cross-Atlantic collision of British post-punk aesthetics and American funk-inflected pop. Its placement as one of the very first videos broadcast on MTV on 1 August 1981 gave it an outsized historical importance relative to its modest chart performance. The surrealist oversized-prop visual language drew on British art-school traditions while anticipating the high-concept video grammar that would define the MTV decade. Director notes: The video was filmed in 1980 to promote the single from the album Clues (Island Records). It was one of the first videos aired on MTV's inaugural broadcast day, 1 August 1981. The production is notable for its use of oversized props — giant telephones and letter blocks — placing Palmer in a surrealist miniaturized environment, a technique Palmer himself later described in interviews as his 'Sesame Street phase.' The concept is widely cited as ahead of its time for 1980 music video production, using in-camera forced-perspective and large-scale set construction rather than post-production compositing. The video was later compiled into the 1992 home video release Robert Palmer: Video Addictions. No production company, crew, or director credit has been publicly documented for this video.