Air Supply — Making Love Out Of Nothing At All

JUL 01 1983 · 12:00

Air Supply — Making Love Out Of Nothing At All (1983) Director: Randee St. Nicholas Era: Early MTV Era (1983) - Peak of the soft rock power ballad boom; the video arrived as MTV-driven narrative mini-movies were cementing their place in mainstream pop promotion. High curatorial value as a primary document of the 1983 soft rock power ballad apex, this video captures the intersection of Steinman's theatrical compositional style, Air Supply's melodic accessibility, and the early MTV narrative video form at their collective peak. The confirmed dual-director production history and the song's extraordinary chart context — simultaneously occupying #2 behind Steinman's own #1 — make it a uniquely rich artifact for both music video history and pop chart scholarship. Context: Released as the sole new track on Air Supply's 1983 Greatest Hits compilation, 'Making Love Out of Nothing at All' was written and produced by Jim Steinman — the same songwriter behind Bonnie Tyler's 'Total Eclipse of the Heart,' which sat at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 while this track peaked at #2, giving Steinman an unprecedented simultaneous 1-2 chart lock. The song's grandiose, operatic construction and lush orchestration represented the apex of the Steinman aesthetic applied to soft rock, and the accompanying mini-movie video reflected the era's embrace of cinematic storytelling on MTV as a legitimate promotional and artistic form. The video's narrative of touring-musician domestic tension resonated with a mainstream audience navigating newly common themes of career ambition versus romantic commitment in early Reagan-era America. Director notes: Two versions of the music video were produced. The primary version — credited to Randee St. Nicholas on both IMDB entries and confirmed by Wikipedia — is a loose narrative homage to band touring life and long-distance relationships. It begins with a couple driving to an airport, where the man boards a Learjet 35 for a tour, then intercuts Air Supply performing onstage with scenes of the couple's relationship. A second version of the video exists; FilmAffinity and IMVDb's separate listing attribute that alternate cut to director Kit Hudson, with cinematography by Isagani Sioson and Jim Steinman as producer. The YouTube 'Official HD Video' filename may correspond to whichever version the band's official channel designated as primary; both versions date to 1983.