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Rick Springfield - Human Touch

Music Video | 1983
ArtistRick Springfield
SongHuman Touch
DirectorDoug Dowdle
Director of PhotographyDaniel Pearl
IntroNo
OutroNo
Sound MixStereo
Technical Specificationscolour - format unknown

Wiki

Synopsis

Set aboard a spaceship in the year 2016, the video presents Rick Springfield as the captain of a crew sealed inside futuristic glass compartments. After the crew is revived, Springfield performs among the ship's computerized controls while dancers and crewmates surround him. The playful sci-fi scenario turns serious when a radiation alert sounds. The crew rushes back into suspended animation, but Springfield's attempt to return to his compartment ends with a female crewmember pulling him into hers, giving the song's plea for human contact a literal conclusion.

Factoids & Trivia

  • The video was released in July 1983, the same year that "Human Touch" appeared as the second single from Springfield's album *Living in Oz*.
  • Its imagined future date of 2016 was more than three decades ahead when the video was made. The setting uses glass pods, computer terminals, warning lights, and a radiation emergency to create an intentionally colorful 1980s vision of science fiction.
  • Springfield later explained that the song was inspired in part by concerns about video games, computers, and the way technology could interfere with communication and personal relationships.
  • The production leans into performance spectacle rather than realism, including choreographed dancers, Springfield's stylized movements, and a deliberately theatrical space-captain persona.
  • "Human Touch" reached No. 18 on the Billboard Hot 100, making it one of the principal singles from *Living in Oz*.
  • The clip was also featured on the 1983 children's music-video program *Don't Look Now*, in an episode that paired it with videos by Bananarama and Stevie Wonder.

Lyrics

(Springfield)

Everybody's talking to computers,
they're all dancing to a drum machine
I know I'm living on the outside
Scared of getting caught between
I'm so cool and calculated alone in the modern world-uh huh

But Sally has a hard time holding back
The alley to her heart is a beaten track
She's got the love monkey riding on her back

[Chorus:]
We all need the human touch
...
© Rick Springfield - Human Touch. This is an excerpt, provided as citation under fair-use.
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