Retro Video of the Week: "I Don't Like Mondays" by The Boomtown Rats

Even though this song and video were technically released before the MTV Era, fuck it, man, it's March, so let's go with an Irish band.  The Boomtown Rats were arguably Ireland's biggest rock band between Thin Lizzy in the mid to late '70s and U2 in the early '80s (and beyond).  Lead singer Bob Geldof became quite well-known in the mid '80s for his philanthropic ventures involving musicians, including spearheading the star-studded Band Aid's holiday classic "Do They Know It's Christmas?" in 1984 and co-founding Live Aid in 1985, both of which raises money for Ethiopian famine relief.

Between 1977 and 1981, they racked up nine Top 10 hits in their native Ireland, including 7 Top 5 hits and one #1, and in the UK, they had nine Top 20 hits, including four in the Top 10 and two #1 songs.  1979's "I Don't Like Mondays" is probably their biggest hit.  It was inspired by a quote from a remorseless 16-year-old mass shooter who shot up an elementary school playground in January 1979, killing two adults and injuring another adult and eight children.  When asked why she did it, she replied, "I don't like Mondays.  This livens up the day."  Geldof heard about it while doing a radio interview in Atlanta, and said, "It was the perfect senseless act and this was the perfect senseless reason for doing it. So perhaps I wrote the perfect senseless song to illustrate it."  Years later, he said he regretted writing the song because it made the shooter famous.

The song was the band's sole #1 in Ireland and one of their #1 hits in the UK.  It also topped the pop charts in Australia and South Africa, while reaching the Top 10 on ten other international pop charts.  It was also their biggest "hit" in the U.S., getting to #73 on the Billboard Hot 100.  The band also performed the song at Live Aid.

The video was directed by legendary '80s music video director David Mallet, who directed videos in the '80s for everyone from Billy Idol to Diana Ross to David Bowie to Tina Turner to Def Leppard to Olivia Newton-John to AC/DC to Queen to KISS to Joan Jett to Iron Maiden to Bryan Adams to Scorpions to The Rolling Stones to Blondie to Rush to Peter Gabriel to The Pretenders to Kool & The Gang to Heart, among others.  It features the band singing in front of a bunch of kids in a school in what I presume is the Irish countryside and then hanging out in a living room, before a super new-wavy scene in a white room, and then we see that the shot of the school at the beginning of the video was just an image on a screen in a studio.  Fuck Mondays, am I right?