Paula Abdul — The Way That You Love Me - Version 1 - David Fincher

JUL 01 1988 · 12:00

Paula Abdul — The Way That You Love Me - Version 1 - David Fincher (1988) Director: David Fincher Era: Late MTV Golden Age / Dance-Pop Emergence (1988) - Pre-breakthrough debut single era of Paula Abdul's Forever Your Girl campaign, shot at a commercial photo-shoot set during the peak of Propaganda Films' dominance of the music video industry. High. This video is a rare primary document of both David Fincher's embryonic directorial style before his feature career and Paula Abdul's first foray into the Fincher-collaborated visual identity that would define her cultural peak. As the origin point of a significant director-artist partnership, it serves as a before-and-after comparative artifact alongside the breakthrough 'Straight Up' video, and is essential for any comprehensive retrospective of either Fincher's music video canon or the evolution of late-1980s commercial dance-pop visual culture. Context: Released in November 1988 as the second single from Paula Abdul's debut album Forever Your Girl (Virgin Records, June 1988), 'The Way That You Love Me' Version 1 arrived during a formative and commercially uncertain period in Abdul's career. Written and produced by Oliver Leiber, the track initially stalled at #88 on the Billboard Hot 100 and failed to break the Top 40 despite modest R&B radio play. The video was shot amid the late-1980s MTV commercial video boom, when Propaganda Films under co-founder David Fincher was establishing a hyper-polished, product-integrated visual language for dance-pop artists. The video's photo-shoot conceit and luxury brand insert cuts directly mirror the song's lyrical thesis—that material wealth is secondary to romantic love—creating an ironic visual counterpoint. The video marks Fincher's first of several collaborations with Abdul, a partnership that would yield the culturally defining 'Straight Up' and 'Cold Hearted' videos within the following year. Director notes: This video, shot in July 1988 for Propaganda Films, was the first collaboration between David Fincher and Paula Abdul, predating his more celebrated work on her 'Straight Up' and 'Cold Hearted' videos. It was produced during the initial commercial release of 'The Way That You Love Me' as the second single from Forever Your Girl. The video depicts Abdul dancing and singing with male dancers at a stylized photo shoot, with expensive product shots intercut throughout. It also features Abdul's first tap dancing sequence in a music video, a signature element she would reprise in subsequent Fincher-directed videos. The single stalled at #88 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1988, but the video predates Fincher and Abdul's successful subsequent collaborations. A second version of the video was later directed by Fincher in August 1989 for the song's re-release, featuring less dancing and more interaction with luxury material goods.