DEF LEPPARD — ＂Lets Get Rocked＂

JUL 01 1992 · 12:00

DEF LEPPARD — ＂Lets Get Rocked＂ (1992) Director: Steve Barron Era: Post-Glam Hard Rock Twilight (1992) - Late-era arena rock releasing its defining swan song single as grunge restructured the mainstream; MTV saturation peak with high-concept CGI-hybrid production marking the genre's commercial apex and imminent cultural displacement. High-priority preservation artifact documenting the precise aesthetic and technological boundary between the 1980s MTV analog era and the emergent digital-visual language of 1990s music video production. Represents Steve Barron's CGI-era evolution and stands as a canonical late-glam-rock document, commercially and culturally significant as both a chart achievement and a marker of genre twilight. Essential for any collection mapping the MTV golden age's final commercial phase. Context: Released 16 March 1992, 'Let's Get Rocked' arrived at a precise cultural inflection point: grunge was ascending and glam-rock's MTV dominance was waning. The video's embrace of early CGI animation — technically ambitious for its budget class — reflected the industry's growing awareness that spectacle and novelty were required to compete for shrinking MTV rotation. The Bart Simpson-inspired animated protagonist directly indexed the Simpsons-era irreverence permeating early-90s youth culture. The single was also the band's first release following the January 1991 death of guitarist Steve Clark, giving the deliberately lighthearted tone an additional layer of emotional catharsis for both band and audience. Director notes: Barron directed 'Let's Get Rocked' in early 1992, with performance scenes filmed on a sound stage in Los Angeles against blue screen. The video blends live-action band footage with early CGI animation — a stylistic continuation of his landmark work on Dire Straits' 'Money for Nothing' (1985), which used similar computer-graphics aesthetics. The animated protagonist Flynn was deliberately designed to evoke a Bart Simpson-like suburban teen without infringing on The Simpsons IP. The blue-screen composite workflow was documented in a Japanese Sony Music TV 'Pick Up Artist' special filmed at the production. This was among Barron's final music video credits before he transitioned primarily to feature and television directing.