Liner Notes · No. 030
"Addicted to Love" by Robert Palmer: the B-side
Quick hall pass: the most copied video of 1986 got a Christmas-movie tribute, a Pepsi remake, a Weird Al potato song and a gender flip from Shania Twain. Here's the B-side.
📰 FAST FACTS
- 2026 marks 40 years since "Addicted to Love" topped the Hot 100. The suit has aged better than most of 1986. (Yahoo)
- Mak Gilchrist, the video's bassist, says she still gets fan mail about it, now mostly by email and social media. Forty years of fan mail for a bass she never learned to play. (Marc Tyler Nobleman)
- Songfacts also lists the song in Glee ("Tested") and Beverly Hills, 90210 ("Wildfire"). Every teen drama eventually needs a man in a suit. (Songfacts)
On this record
TRACK 1 · The cameo
Love Actually, Britney's Pepsi suit and a Roseanne fib
Everyone copied the suit and the models: Britney for Pepsi, a Roseanne first-date fib, and Black Mirror's 80s soundtrack.
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The copycats: Few videos have been remade as often as this one. A man in a suit, a row of blank-faced models holding instruments they can't play: it's so simple that every comedy writer since 1986 has thought, "we could do that." They were right. They all did.
The cola: In 2002, Britney Spears' full-length "Joy of Cola" Pepsi commercial ran through the eras of pop, and for one stretch she took the Palmer role herself: menswear, crooner pose, a row of models behind her. Pepsi re-released the spot in 2023, after more than 20 years off national TV. The suit came back. So did the cola.
The sitcom: In the 1992 Roseanne episode "Mommy Nearest," Jackie (Laurie Metcalf) tells her new boyfriend she was one of the girls in the "Addicted to Love" video. She was not. Lying on a first date about being in a music video is the most 1992 thing that has ever happened.
The soundtrack: Black Mirror's "San Junipero" (2016), the episode set in a 1987 party town, puts the song on its 80s soundtrack. And the 1997 movie Addicted to Love borrowed the title outright, with a Neneh Cherry cover in it. Free title, no models required.
And then there's the Christmas movie. Quiz time.
In Love Actually (2003), whose music video copies the "Addicted to Love" look?
No Googling. We'll know.
That's Side A. Flip the tape.
Side B is where it gets weird:
- The stages it owned in 1986: Saturday Night Live, the VMA opener, and a Grammy the next year.
- The covers: Weird Al's potato parody, Sonic Youth under a fake name, Tina Turner live, and Shania Twain's band of male models.
- Robert Palmer, remembered, and the box set that collected his Island years.
Free, every Tuesday. One song, the story you never heard, and a 10-minute hall pass from the doomscroll. Already subscribed? Enter your email to unlock.
▶ SIDE B
TRACK 2 · The live one
SNL, the VMA opener and the Grammy
SNL two months before No. 1, the VMA opener that won Best Male Video, then his first Grammy. The models went home empty-handed.
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March 15, 1986: Palmer played it on Saturday Night Live, two months before it hit No. 1. Live television, no mannequins to hide behind. Brave.
September 1986: He opened the MTV Video Music Awards in Los Angeles with it, and the video won Best Male Video that same night. Open the show, take home a Moonman: the kind of evening most of us only get at a bowling alley.
1987: The song won Palmer his first Grammy, Best Male Rock Vocal Performance. He would win that category twice. The models, for the record, were not nominated for anything.
TRACK 3 · Cover watch
The covers (one of them is about potatoes)
Potatoes, Sonic Youth in disguise, Tina Turner live and Shania's gender-flipped video. Play them, then vote.
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- 1986 · "Weird Al" Yankovic, "Addicted to Spuds." A potato parody on Polka Party!, mostly a list of potato dishes and puns. The album peaked at #177 on the Billboard 200. Even Weird Al has a flop report.
- 1988 · Ciccone Youth. Sonic Youth, recording under an alias, covered it on The Whitey Album. Cool kids pretending they weren't humming it. We saw you.
- 1988 · Tina Turner, live. Her version on Tina Live in Europe, and again on TINA Live, recorded in Arnhem in 2009. Tina did not need five models. Tina was the band.
- 1999 · Shania Twain, "Man! I Feel Like a Woman!" Not a cover of the song, a remake of the video: Twain in front of a band of identically styled, heavily made-up male models, directed by Paul Boyd. It has passed 500 million YouTube views and is her most-watched video. Turns out the joke works both ways.
▶ WATCH THE CONTENDERS
Battle of the versions: which "Addicted to Love" wins?
Cast your vote. Results in the next issue. Choose carefully: we're judging you.
TRACK 4 · Where are they now
Robert Palmer, remembered
Robert Palmer died of a heart attack in Paris in 2003, at 54. His Island Records albums came back in a 2023 box set.
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In memory: Robert Palmer died of a heart attack in Paris on September 26, 2003. He was 54. His manager said he had passed a medical checkup about two weeks earlier.
The archive: In February 2023, Edsel released The Island Records Years, a box set of all nine albums he made for Island from 1974 to 1985, with B-sides, demos and alternate takes. A reissue blog also lists a limited 2LP vinyl edition of the compilation Collected for July 2026.
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