Robert Palmer - Looking For Clues

What this video is

Released in October 1980 at the precise hinge point between 1970s art-rock and the oncoming new wave electronic era, 'Looking For Clues' represented a conscious stylistic rupture for Robert Palmer. Recorded at Compass Point Studios in Nassau with Talking Heads drummer Chris Frantz and featuring Gary Numan on keyboards, the track and its video embodied the cross-Atlantic collision of British post-punk aesthetics and…

Why it matters

A landmark artifact of the British new wave's electronic turn, this video predates the polished Palmer-Donovan 'Palmer Girls' formula by six years and demonstrates the rawer, more experimental approach to music video at the pre-MTV moment. Its forced-perspective surrealism places it in a lineage…