AIR - Kelly Watch the Stars (from Moon Safari - Official Video)

What this video is

Released in May 1998 as the second single from Moon Safari, 'Kelly Watch the Stars' arrived at the apex of the French Touch movement's international crossover. The song and video distilled a uniquely Gallic nostalgia for 1970s American pop culture — specifically Charlie's Angels — filtered through analogue synthesizers and a surrealist comic sensibility. Directed by Mike Mills at a moment when his subcultural…

Why it matters

A canonical artifact of late-1990s French electronic pop and the downtempo/chillout movement. The video's surrealist sport narrative and warm analogue visual palette helped establish a template for European electronic music promo aesthetics that influenced subsequent art-directed music video…

The director

Michael Chadbourne Mills (born March 20, 1966, Berkeley, CA) is an American film director, writer, and graphic designer. Graduate of Cooper Union. Before transitioning to feature films, he directed music videos for Air, Pulp, Moby, Yoko Ono, and others, and…