It happened in the most mundane of places – McDonald’s. Standing in line, waiting to order my usual morning coffee, a song drifted through the sound system. At first, it was just background noise, but then a strange sensation washed over me: familiarity. I couldn’t immediately place it, but my brain was already humming along. Before I knew it, words were escaping my lips, and I was singing. To my utter astonishment, I knew every single lyric.
The song? Eric Carmen’s “Make Me Lose Control.” Released initially in 1975, it experienced a resurgence thanks to the popularity of “Hungry Eyes” from the Dirty Dancing soundtrack. Apparently, it climbed to number 3 on the Billboard charts that year. Yet, and this is the baffling part, I have absolutely no conscious memory of ever hearing this song before. And still, every single word was locked in my head, ready to be sung.
It’s a truly bizarre phenomenon, isn’t it? This feeling of deeply knowing something you didn’t realize you knew. I was never a die-hard Eric Carmen fan. My record collection is decidedly Carmen-free. And let’s be honest, “Make Me Lose Control” probably hasn’t graced the airwaves since the early 90s. So how could this “Lose Control Song” be so ingrained in my memory?
This isn’t the first time this has happened to me. A few years back, while driving to New York with Elysha, a similar musical déjà vu struck. Richard Marx’s “Should’ve Known Better” started playing, and again, the same uncanny experience unfolded. If you had asked me beforehand if I knew that Richard Marx song, I would have confidently said no. But as the music filled the car, the lyrics poured out of me, word for word. It was as if these songs were dormant files in my brain, suddenly activated by some unknown trigger.
This recent “Make Me Lose Control” incident compelled me to revisit the music video. And let me tell you, it’s a trip.
The video opens on a sunny beach with a woman tuning into a radio. We hear a DJ and Eric Carmen himself discussing the success of “Hungry Eyes,” setting the stage before transitioning to a radio station setting. The DJ cues up “Make Me Lose Control.” Carmen and the DJ exchange a handshake, and Carmen departs. So far, so standard 80s music video fare.
But then, things take a decidedly strange turn. The scene shifts to a 1950s-esque setting, with Carmen now driving a classic car. This scene is a clear homage to the iconic moment in American Graffiti where Richard Dreyfuss’s character encounters the blonde in the T-Bird. She mouths “I love you,” a fleeting, never-to-be-realized connection.
However, here’s where the music video logic starts to unravel. Carmen is singing passionately about Jennifer, presumably the woman seated next to him in the car. But to further complicate matters, there’s a third person in the car – a man. Are we meant to believe the mystery woman in the T-Bird is Jennifer, despite the song suggesting a long-established love? It’s all rather perplexing. And adding to the confusion, Carmen is sporting the exact same clothes in this 1950s flashback as he was in the 1980s radio station scenes. Time-traveling fashion?
And then, the video throws in another curveball. Near the song’s end, we briefly cut back to the radio station. Here, the DJ is inexplicably throwing darts at a photo of a man pinned to the wall. Who is this unfortunate individual? Why the dartboard treatment? What is the narrative thread here? Your guess is as good as mine.
The video then snaps back to the 1950s scene before returning to the radio station one last time. The DJ delivers some classic DJ outro spiel as the song fades. Finally, we’re back on the beach, where the woman from the opening picks up her radio and walks off into the sunset.
It’s a lot to unpack for a single music video. It’s meta on multiple levels, arguably before “meta” was even a common term. We have a song performance by the artist in the 80s, a song introduction leading to a 50s scene referencing a 70s movie about the 50s, a return to the 80s radio station (minus the artist), and bookended by a beach scene.
It’s… ambitious. Someone clearly believed this intricate, slightly nonsensical narrative would perfectly complement a song about, well, losing control. And in a strange way, perhaps it does. Just like the song’s inexplicable familiarity in my memory, the music video is a chaotic, memorable puzzle.
