XTC - The Ballad Of Peter Pumpkinhead

What this video is

Released May 1992 on Virgin Records as the second single from XTC's album Nonsuch, 'The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead' arrived in a year saturated with political disillusionment and conspiracy mythology in popular culture. Oliver Stone's JFK (1991) had recently re-ignited mass public fascination with the Kennedy assassination, providing the video's primary visual vocabulary. The song's fable of a too-good-to-survive…

Why it matters

Represents a high-water mark for XTC's late-period art-pop ambition, reaching #1 on the US Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart and demonstrating that British post-punk intelligentsia could command American alternative airplay. The video's willingness to stage a fictionalized presidential…

The director

Nick Brandt (born 1964, London) studied Painting and Film at Saint Martin's School of Art. He relocated to California in 1992 and built a career directing award-winning music videos, working with artists including Michael Jackson ('Earth Song', 'Stranger in…