Dancing in the Dark

I only saw this fairly recently and I can't figure it out. What made Springsteen think this dance was cool? Up until this point he'd been putting out some of the best and most accessible stuff of the previous decade, and even this number is a fun little pop gem, but then he made a music video that's goofiness is matched only by how boring it is.

If blame for the former belongs to the Boss, we can pin the latter on the video's director: Brian De Palma. Did they really need to hire the guy who had already made movies like Carrie and Scarface to direct a straight-forward concert video like this one? And can you believe that this is the gig that launched the career of a twenty-year-old Courteney Cox? She blushes twice and then awkwardly does the Bruce dance as the camera pulls away. Let's put this girl on sitcoms!

It's also strange to me that the official Bruce Springsteen Youtube channel thinks that this song came from the nonexistent album Dancing in the Dark instead of the real and famous Born in the U.S.A. Does the official Bruce Springsteen Youtube channel even like Bruce Springsteen?

And yet... I can't stop watching.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk8VZgJkpeg
(embedding disabled by request)