Erasure - Who Needs Love Like That

What this video is

Released in September 1985, 'Who Needs Love Like That' arrived at the peak of the UK synth-pop explosion, at a moment when music video had become the primary promotional battleground for independent electronic acts. Mute Records, under Daniel Miller, was consolidating its identity as the home of adventurous electronic pop. The video's mock-Western theatrical framework and overt drag performance by both band members…

Why it matters

As Erasure's debut single, this video marks the origin point of one of the most commercially and culturally successful synth-pop acts of the late 1980s and early 1990s. The mock-Western camp concept established the band's visual identity — flamboyant, theatrical, unapologetically queer — before a…

The director

British artist, director, writer, and editor (born July 1950); pioneer of the UK Scratch Video movement in the early 1980s, with early work shown at MoMA's 1983 video art survey. Directed music videos for Scritti Politti (Wood Beez, Absolute, The Word Girl),…