"Leader Of The Pack Video From 1960s Is SCARY

The song "Leader Of The Pack" certainly has its fans, but
its also quite a piece of 1960s oddness.
 Every decade has its style mishaps, its entertainment embarrassments and it's creepy moments, and as far as I'm concerned, the 1960s had one super, doozy of one. 

We take you back to 1964 with song "Leader of the Pack by the Shangri-Las.  While the song, and a video that's still circulating out there might have been super cool back then, you have to cringe and laugh at this for sure. 

The video is a the bottom of this post, you HAVE to watch. But I'll set it up for you.

I shouldn't mock, but I can't help it. The video in particular has so many wonderful moving parts. The lead singer's hair is one of the Seven World Wonders of structure. The "Leader Of The Pack" protagonist is a creepy guy who is way too old for our structure hair lady.  No wonder her parents forbade her from seeing this dude!  

The two backup singers have the classic Karen bob hairdo way before we had Karens. And the are mean girls, asking Structure Hair Girl if "Jimmy" our leader of the pack is picking her up after school today. Oh, way to twist the knife on a grieving girl, Karens! 

The two Karens spend the rest of the song looking peeved as the echo the last word of most of the lines Structured Hair Girl sings. 

Poor Jimmy, the so-called Leader, is a hapless big galoot. He struggles with his motorcycle, kind of like a great-grandpa trying and failing to manage a scooter. He looks confused. No wonder he can't drive, as we soon find out 

Then, Structured Hail Girl and the Karens  they all re-live Jimmy's fatal crash. Off camera, there's skidding tires and what sounds like a wall of pots and pans falling out of a closet.  Structured Hair Girl does nothing but ineffectually (half-heartedly?) yell, "Look out! Look out!"

The song was actually a Number One hit on Billboard's Hot 100 in 1964.  It's on the list of Rolling Stone's 500 best songs of all time, placing somewhere in the mid 450s. Billboard also placed the song at Number 9 in its list of the greatest girl group hits of all time. The song is also enshrined in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

So OK, "Leader of the Pack" does have something going for it. I guess.

Some things from the 60s still seem cool all these decades later. This video and song, not so much. 

Check it out:



 

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