Retro Video of the Week: "Loverboy" by Billy Ocean

As happens when one goes on vacation, as I did last week, this week has been hellishly busy at work.  On an entirely unrelated note I have had Billy Ocean's "Loverboy" in my head the last day or two, so that will be this week's Retro Video of the Week.

Co-written by Ocean, Keith Diamond, and legendary producer Mutt Lange, "Loverboy" was the second single released off of Ocean's breakthrough, multi-platinum 1984 album Suddenly.  Though he four Top 20 hits in his native UK in the late '70s, prior to the Suddenly album, Ocean's only Top 40 hit in the U.S. was 1976's "Love Really Hurts Without You."  Suddenly changed all that, as the first three singles from the album all reached the Top 5 of the Billboard Hot 100 -- "Caribbean Queen" (#1), "Loverboy" (#2), and the title track (#4) -- and the fourth single, "Mystery Lady" went to #24.  Ocean's international chart successes would continue throughout the rest of the '80s.

"Loverboy" not only hit #2 on the Billboard Hot 100, but it was also #1 on the Billboard Dance Club chart and on the South African pop chart (for 11 weeks), as well as #15 on the UK pop chart and Top 10 on the pop charts in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, and New Zealand.

The video is great.  It's like a version of the cantina in Star Wars, with aliens fighting each other in a cave bar along the coast, Jawa-like beings watching it all and dancing, and some robots with TVs for heads.  Some balding, but with side dreads, goat-fish-lizard-headed dude gets the girl in the end, and that's all that matters.  He's her loverboy.