PA-RA-NOIA THA DE-STROY-AHHH...
Um...Happy Halloween?
In honor of the holiday, I'm celebrating one of my favorite Halloween-ish songs. I saw it posted on my friend Kevin Kelly's "Eighties Greaties" Facebook group recently and remembered how much I loved it.
Rockwell's "Somebody's Watching Me" was a big hit in 1984, but it wasn't released at Halloween. I'm guessing that with Michael Jackson's "Thriller" (the song + video) being so huge in late '83 and screening about once an hour on MTV, this song would've probably gone completely unnoticed (even though Rockwell turned out to be Berry Gordy's son...and Michael Jackson sings the chorus!).
My big memory of "Somebody's Watching Me," was at horse camp in the spring of '84 (horse camp was always during spring break) when I was 10, and I remember some of the cool "older" (14- to 15-year-old) girls reciting the spoken parts of the song in goofy voices as we saddled up our horses in the stable. Those cool older girls got the best deal at horse camp, dammit. They got to sleep out in the RV at night and stay up as late as they wanted, while us youngsters had to be in bed at 9pm and sleep all crammed together in sleeping bags on the floor of my riding instructor's living room. Yeah, I'm still bitter about it. But I digress...
Rockwell's "Somebody's Watching Me" was a big hit in 1984, but it wasn't released at Halloween. I'm guessing that with Michael Jackson's "Thriller" (the song + video) being so huge in late '83 and screening about once an hour on MTV, this song would've probably gone completely unnoticed (even though Rockwell turned out to be Berry Gordy's son...and Michael Jackson sings the chorus!).
My big memory of "Somebody's Watching Me," was at horse camp in the spring of '84 (horse camp was always during spring break) when I was 10, and I remember some of the cool "older" (14- to 15-year-old) girls reciting the spoken parts of the song in goofy voices as we saddled up our horses in the stable. Those cool older girls got the best deal at horse camp, dammit. They got to sleep out in the RV at night and stay up as late as they wanted, while us youngsters had to be in bed at 9pm and sleep all crammed together in sleeping bags on the floor of my riding instructor's living room. Yeah, I'm still bitter about it. But I digress...
As an adult, I really dig the song's whole "paranoid" vibe. The video is effectively freaky too, particularly the heads peering in the windows and the pig/boar/armadillo-looking thing that chases Rockwell down the hallway (spoiler--it turns out to be a dog).
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