Cheap Trick - I Can't Take It

What this video is

Released in April 1983, 'I Can't Take It' arrived at a pivotal and difficult commercial juncture for Cheap Trick. The band's seventh studio album Next Position Please was produced by Todd Rundgren and marked a deliberate pivot toward a cleaner, more pop-oriented sound following years of harder rock output. The single failed to chart, reflecting the band's commercial decline in the early 1980s even as they pursued…

Why it matters

As a power-pop artifact from 1983, this video represents the genre's attempt to translate its melodic, hook-driven energy into the nascent music video format. Power-pop acts of this era faced an aesthetic challenge: the genre's emotional core resided in sound, not image, making visual translation…

The director

Mark Rezyka is a music video director active in the early-to-mid 1980s who directed music videos during the formative MTV era. He is credited as the director of Cheap Trick's 1983 video for 'I Can't Take It' from the album Next Position Please. He has been…