Massive Attack – Teardrop
1998 · Directed by Walter Stern
815K Likes
Best comments
1.“Ma'am, from what I can see on the ultrasound... your baby appears to be singing.”
More comments
- 2.“As a former baby, I can confirm this used to play in the womb.”
- 3.“That baby's old enough to buy liquor now, lol.”
The story
A baby, still in the womb, singing along. That's the whole video, and it's one of the strangest things MTV ever handed a trophy to. Walter Stern, who also shot The Prodigy's Firestarter, directed it. The fetus is a life-size latex animatronic puppet that took about six weeks to build, floating among drifting bits of organic matter. It won Best Video at the 1998 MTV Europe Music Awards. The band called it a celebration of life, and some viewers read it as an anti-abortion statement. The idea came along well after the song was finished.
The song nearly had a different voice. Andrew Vowles wanted Madonna, who reportedly loved the track, but 3D and Daddy G outvoted him and brought in Elizabeth Fraser of Cocteau Twins. Fraser wrote her words around the time she learned that Jeff Buckley, her former partner, had drowned, and she later said the song is largely about him. Under her voice sits a harpsichord riff by Neil Davidge and a sped-up loop of Les McCann's Sometimes I Cry, vinyl crackle and all.
Teardrop peaked at number ten in the UK, the band's only top-ten single there. Then American TV found it: it became the opening theme of House, and Bryan Singer, one of the show's executive producers, said the video pushed the show toward practical effects over CGI. A singing fetus, a TV hospital and a love song for a drowned friend. Trip hop always did go to strange places.
