Here We Go Again… It’s The Video You Deserve
And here I go again on my own…
Going down this lonely road to a vid you know…
Cause it’s Monday you deserve some laughs alone…
But you know what it means, when this column drops, and you say “this is so cheesy…”
Yes. It is time. For the return of The Video You Deserve.
Every Monday, we give you a cheesy music video to kick off your week with a laugh and a smile, and this week’s video is certainly one of the most iconic of all time. It launched the stardom of not only a band, but an actress and model who became ubiquitous with it.
Of course, I’m talking about “Here I Go Again,” by Whitesnake, featuring model Julie E. “Tawny” Kitaen.
Whitesnake lead singer, David Coverdale, and former Whitesnake guitarist, Bernie Marsden, wrote the song in 1981, and it was originally released on their 1982 album, Saints & Sinners.
However, it didn’t really go anywhere, so Whitesnake re-recorded it for their 1987 self-titled album. The song was released as a single and hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in October 1987, number nine on the UK Singles Chart in November 1987 and hit number one on the Canadian Singles Chart in October 1987.
Coverdale told Consequence of Sound, “It’s an old song that I wrote about the breakdown of my first marriage. I had rented a villa in the Algarve — the southern coast of Portugal, opposite Africa — with my young daughter, and my wife and I ended up sleeping in separate rooms. We just went from being the best of friends to not being the best of friends. And ‘Here I Go Again’ was about that.”
The original idea for the video was to have Guess jeans model Claudia Schiffer dancing between the iconic white and black Jaguars, but Schiffer backed out of the project. Coverdale’s director called him to give him the bad news while Coverdale was out on a date with Kitaen, a model and actress who had starred in a number of b-movies and projects. Coverdale showed up at the director’s office with his companion and the director instantly told him Kitaen was THE girl for the project, and was hired on the spot, in part because they needed to shoot the video and Schiffer backing out had left them in a pinch.
Originally, Paula Abdul was hired to choreograph the dancing, but quit over “creative differences,” and so, the video was revamped with Kitaen improvising moves as she writhed on the hoods of the Jaguars and in the car with Coverdale.
The result of all that chaos was a humungous hit, which became one of the most popular videos in MTV history, and launched Coverdale’s career into the stratosphere. He and Kitaen ended up getting married for a lengthy two years from 1989 to 1991, and ultimately divorced. But their pairing lives on, in Whitesnake’s only number one song on the US charts.
And in… this week’s Video You Deserve…
