Robyn Gallagher

Back when “I Want Your Sex” was released, it was so controversial that the video was only shown on New Zealand television a couple of times, on some late-night music video show. It’s funny to think that in the years since the pop charts have quite happily accomodated “I Wanna Sex You Up”, “Sex on Fire”, “Sex and Candy”, “Sex Bomb” and of course “Let’s Talk About Sex”. Not to mention the thousands and thousands of songs about sex. Has society crumbled or whatever it was that the elders of 1987 feared? Uh, no. George Michael did not create a generation of sluts.

If I could go travel in time to 1987, I would pass this message on to my 12-year-old self: in the future, you will be able to watch the ‘I Want Your Sex’ video as much as you like, whenever you want to. You can even watch it on the bus. Also, George Michael is gay.”

Justin Bieber and Mariah Carey’s take on “All I Want For Christmas is You” is the most deliciously camp yuletide celebration ever. The video carefully avoids the MILF elephant in the room by keeping Bieb and Mariah separate for most of the video, but everyone’s thinking it. This song and this video makes me so happy.

Aotearoa hip hop crew ChillStreet have “SaveMart”, an ode to op-shopping. It’s got a cool early ’90s flavour (A Tribe Called Quest-ish), but with an unmistakable New Zealand flavour. Is this the first NZ hip hop track to say “arksed” for “asked”?

Here’s the video for Jody Watley’s 1989 song “Real Love”. It was nominated for six MTV VMAs, which is puts her up there with Madonna and Janet Jackson. It’s stylish and cool. Seeing it now, it feel like “Oh, yeah, seen that before”. But this is where it was done first. Everyone else followed.