David Bowie - Boys Keep Swinging

What this video is

Released 27 April 1979 as the lead single from Lodger, the closing chapter of Bowie and Brian Eno's Berlin Trilogy, Boys Keep Swinging arrived at the intersection of post-punk destabilisation and the nascent music video era. More than two years before MTV launched, Rolling Stone in July 1979 specifically cited this video as a harbinger of promotional tape culture in rock. The video's drag conceits — Bowie…

Why it matters

Boys Keep Swinging represents a pivotal document at the convergence of glam rock's gender politics, art-rock conceptualism, new wave irony, and the emergent music video promo form. As the first Bowie/Mallet collaboration, it inaugurated one of the most consequential artist-director partnerships of…

The director

British music video and television director David Mallet began his career in UK television production before becoming one of the most influential music video directors of the early MTV era. His collaboration with David Bowie, beginning with Boys Keep…