Watch Shooter Jennings’ Bizarre Eighties Homage in ‘Love Kills’ Video
In 1984, composer Giorgio Moroder completed a new restoration and edit of Fritz Lang’s 1927 sci-fi odyssey Metropolis, setting the visuals to a soundtrack of pulsing disco and the era’s best known singers. Queen front man Freddie Mercury collaborated with Moroder on “Love Kills,” the singer’s first solo release outside the band.
Fast-forward to 2016, when Shooter Jennings recorded his own version of “Love Kills” for the album Countach (for Giorgio), a collection of popular Moroder songs rendered with a combination of synthesizers and more traditionally country instruments. Jennings cites it as an example of Moroder’s genius for melodic hooks.
“There’s all these circles of music that happen in the chorus,” he says. “The average person listens to it and doesn’t hear all that because it seems normal, but he’s really an insane composer. And melody goes along with the composition.”
The “Love Kills” video is appropriately bonkers, marrying the dystopian vibe of Eighties sci-fi films like Tron and the rise of computer gaming to the weak signal quality of pre-cable television. Jennings sports a white suit, reclining on a motorcycle or behind the wheel of a Pontiac Firebird. It’s a loving homage to the movies and music he saw as a child of the Eighties, and it’s like nothing else out there right now.