A-Ha: The Literal Remix

You remember the video for Take on Me. A woman finds herself sucked into a poorly drawn black-and white-comic strip, where she quickly falls in love with an animated, mullet-wearing gent in a leather jacket. The two of them are then inexplicably chased by a team of pipe wrench-wielding motorcycle racers dressed like Muttley from Wacky Races. He protects her and soon escapes his monochrome prison. The song's buoyant synth lines rejoice. The video is so easily mockable that Family Guy, predictably, took its own crack at it.

In this remix of the video by Dustin McLean, the lyrics repeat exactly what is occurring on screen. "Everything's drawn and super 80s," croons the singer when the woman first enters the comic (the technique used here is one called rotoscoping, which essentially draws over footage of actual people; Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was one of the first major films to use rotoscoping, while more recent examples include A Scanner Darkly and Waking Life). "I'm going to kick some ass with my own pipe wrench," when the leather-clad dude pulls out his weapon (where the hell was he hiding that one?). And, the most brilliant line in the video—"Band montage!"

We'd love to see other music videos given the same treatment. Nine Inch Nails' Closer: "Decapitated pig head spinning on a metal spike/Weird small monkey crucified." Fatboy Slim's Weapon of Choice: "Christopher Walken flies in a suit/He's cool, and creepy too." The White Stripes' Fell in Love with a Girl: "Legos up and they're down/Red and white, it's a strict color scheme."

Come on, people. Get to work.