Tag Archives: Kim Carnes

Music Flashback Friday…

Sometimes when you’ve got music in the background while working, you note recommendations appear and, the other day, a 1982 album by Kim Carnes showed up: Voyeur.

For those unfamiliar with the name, Kim Carnes is probably most famous for this song, which was pretty damn popular in its day:

When I saw the recommended album, I figured it must be the one that had Bette Davis Eyes on it. I was wrong, but as it turned out, I was familiar with at least two of the songs on the album.

I can honestly say I haven’t heard either of those songs in a very long time, likely in/around the time they were originally released nearly (gulp) forty years ago.

The first was the song the album was named after, Voyeur

Man, do I love the song… a beautiful distillation of 80’s synth new wave…!

But, man (redux), pretty depressing video concept, no? Abusive boyfriend, an implied murdered woman (with Kim Carnes herself being the next victim?)… huh. I wonder if the downbeat nature of this video might have harmed the song in the long run. Who knows.

The second song I recognized was Looker, though the version I was more familiar with I’ll get to in a moment:

The original version of the song was by Sue Saad and was the theme of the film of the same name, the Michael Crichton written/directed Looker (the video below shows sequences from that movie, in case you’re wondering. The film was about supermodels who are being killed for… reasons. The film didn’t make a whole lot of sense, even if some of the women presented were quite gorgeous!)…

Weird that the film would be released with the song in 1981 and then Kim Carnes would do her version only a year later in Voyeur!

Finally, there was an extended version of the song Voyeur. It runs nearly two minutes longer than the original version of the song…

This has been your 1980’s synth/new wave flashback for the day!

😉