Synopsis

The promo opens with XTC performing in a stark white studio, then shifts into a deliberately absurd supermarket setting. The band members move through the aisles as everyday grocery imagery collides with pop-art jokes, including records treated like supermarket merchandise and a butcher handling vinyl. The deadpan staging, quick cuts, and energetic miming match the song's playful challenge to genre labels, presenting XTC as a nervous, witty new-wave band refusing to be boxed in.

Factoids & Trivia

• The video was filmed at St John's Wood studios and on location in Swindon in April 1978.

• Rock Biz Pix produced the promo for Virgin Records, with Martin Baker credited as producer.

• It promotes the re-recorded single version, titled "This Is Pop?", rather than the original album recording on *White Music*. The single and album were released on January 20, 1978.

• The song was written by Andy Partridge as a way of defining XTC before music journalists could place the band in a restrictive category such as punk.

• The supermarket sequence turns the idea of pop into a visual commodity, with seven-inch records presented alongside ordinary grocery products.

• The lineup seen in the video is Andy Partridge, Colin Moulding, Terry Chambers, and Barry Andrews, the original quartet featured on XTC's debut album.