Whether you view Lionel Richie "Hello" as the best or worst video of all time is akin to how you view 50 Cent's horribly awry first pitch at a Mets game: Yes, it's an abomination, an embarassment, but has any other baseball pitch this year — ceremonial or otherwise — been talked about anywhere near as much?
So, yes: "Hello" may make you cringe. It may be a rubberneck delight. But, you remember it. In fact, you love it. And so does Lionel, who shared some tales with Rolling Stone about it:
The story behind that is really simple. [Director] Bob Giraldi shocked me on "Hello." It was a straightforward love story and he said, "No I'm gonna make the girl blind." I said, "Why do we have to go that heavy? Just make it a love story."
Then I get to the video shoot and there's this God-awful looking clay model of my head. I said, "Bob, this doesn't look like me." He said, "OK, we'll do the scene and we'll talk about this later, Lionel." We get to scene two and I said, "Bob, I see the bust here. It doesn't look like me." He says, "Scene two, now we're getting closer." It happens again with scene three and then finally we're getting right to shoot the scene where I discover that she's done it. I say, "Bob, it doesn't look like me." And he looks at me and says, "Lionel, she's blind!" [Huge laughter] And I said, "OK, I get it."
