Synopsis

Eurythmics perform "Sexcrime (Nineteen Eighty-Four)" in stark studio and industrial settings while scenes from the 1984 film cut into the performance. Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart appear in severe, Orwellian imagery, surrounded by darkness, machinery, rain, and the threatening presence of Big Brother. Film footage featuring Winston Smith, Julia, and the totalitarian state broadens the song into a compact audiovisual advertisement for the movie, matching the track's tense electronic pulse and themes of surveillance, repression, and forbidden desire.

Factoids & Trivia

• The video was filmed at London's Battersea Power Station on October 25, 1984. The imposing industrial location reinforces the song's dystopian atmosphere.

• The film excerpts include footage of John Hurt as Winston Smith, Suzanna Hamilton as Julia, and Bob Flag as Big Brother.

• "Sexcrime" was written for the Eurythmics soundtrack to 1984, but the song was removed from the finished film. It was nevertheless used in the movie's trailer, while the promotional video appeared with some home-video releases.

• The title comes directly from George Orwell's Newspeak vocabulary. In the novel, "sexcrime" refers to sexual activity prohibited by the state.

• The track uses extensive vocal sampling, including chopped fragments of Annie Lennox's voice. Dave Stewart's electronically processed voice repeats "nineteen eighty four."

• The title caused problems in the United States, where some radio programmers and MTV treated it as an ordinary reference to sexual crime rather than an Orwellian term. The single reached No. 81 on the Billboard Hot 100 but rose to No. 2 on the US dance chart.

• In the United Kingdom, the single was a major success, reaching No. 4 and becoming one of Eurythmics' biggest-selling releases.

• The video helped promote both the single and the film during the controversy surrounding the Eurythmics soundtrack. The final film used much less of their music than the band had originally expected.