Eiffel 65 Create An Intergalactic CGI War Zone For ‘Blue (Da Ba Dee)’
There are some things in life that you just had to be there for to fully understand. Moments in time that can be given all the requisite historical context, but can never fully express the exact feeling people had living through those moments as they happened. Beatlemania. Punk Rock. Eiffel 65.
Back in 1999, Eurodance (as a genre) was still riding high on Dance & Alternative radio stations across America. Much has traditionally been made of the mid 90s Eurodance & House music tropes of groups like Culture Beat and La Bouche with sultry female vocals on the chorus mixed with assertive male verses over a pounding beat. But the late 90s definitely saw a much more campy, playful turn for the genre. Groups like Aqua and Vengaboys brought a lighter tone and more anthemic approach to the genre.
With that as the backdrop, it’s no wonder that a little Italian dance song ambiguously about the color blue caught fire and became a hit song in 18 different countries, including the United States.
Completely anecdotal, but I do not remember the music video catching as much lightning in a bottle. ‘Blue (Da Ba Dee)’ was very much a product of radio, back when radio could be a massive catalyst for such things.
Perhaps the music video also doesn’t have as much resonance because it’s kind-of a weird mess.
Made in-house by Eiffel 65’s production house, Bliss Corporation, the video made heavy use of CGI to depict actual blue aliens flying around space and getting into armed firefights. What this has to do with anything in the actual song outside of the blue motif is anyone’s guess.
We see goofy blue aliens boarding a space cruiser and running around a cargo area attacking dodgy green screen versions of Eiffel 65 as they karate chop the blue guys into a bunch of crates while other blue aliens are sneaking around shadowy space corridors. It’s all very Blade Runner. Frankly, it’s all very Playstation 1. If you showed this to me in 1999 and told me you just rented a budget game from Blockbuster, I wouldn’t flinch.
Would it surprise you to learn that Bliss Corporation pumped out this video from a green screen garage studio in about three months? An undoubtedly impressive feat for the time. But also the likely reason this video, for all its cutting edge 1999 CGI, feels a little, well, janky.
That doesn’t mean there’s no fun to be had here. If you’re the type of person that revels in the absurd, this is definitely a music video worth a few repeat viewings just to catch every detail and absorb yourself in the sight of a blue alien getting shot at with lightning by a member of Eiffel 65.
While the music video for ‘Blue (Da Ba Dee)’ didn’t have nearly the kind of legs that the song itself did, it’s no less a great curio of a time when CGI graphics weren’t quite as refined as they would become and the genre they were created in service of was smack in the middle of a period that led to the type of weird intergalactic camp that only 1999 Eurodance could churn out.
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