Eddy Grant - Electric Avenue

What this video is

Released on the 1982 album 'Killer on the Rampage' and issued as a single in 1983, 'Electric Avenue' was written by Eddy Grant in direct response to the 1981 Brixton riots — a flashpoint of racial tension, unemployment, and police violence in South London's Caribbean immigrant community. Grant had already relocated to Barbados when the song was recorded, lending the video a transoceanic duality: the song's subject…

Why it matters

'Electric Avenue' occupies a unique position as a reggae-funk-pop crossover that carried explicit political content into mainstream Western pop channels at a moment when MTV's racial gatekeeping was under intense scrutiny. It demonstrated that socially conscious Black artists could achieve mass…

The director

Steve Barron (born 4 May 1956, Dublin, Ireland) is an Irish-British filmmaker who began his career as a camera assistant on A Bridge Too Far (1977), The Duellists (1977), and Superman (1978). He became a pioneering music video director in the early 1980s,…