Great song!
“Sharp Dressed Man” is one of ZZ Top’s best known songs, performed by ZZ Top from their signature album Eliminator released in 1983. The song is famous for its guitar riff, recognizable chorus, and music video which received a large amount of airplay during the early years of MTV. When released as a single late in the year, it became their most successful song so far, reaching #2 on the Mainstream Rock charts and #56 on Pop Singles. The lyrics deal with how women have a fondness for men wearing elegant clothes.
The song is featured in the 2005 video game Guitar Hero, as well as a brief appearance on an episode of Beavis and Butt-Head entitled “Radio Sweethearts,” in which it can be heard on a radio. It also appeared on an S&K men’s suits commercial. Debbie Harry covered the song on her “Domination” tour of the UK in July 1991. At 2007’s VH1 Rock Honors. Nickelback covered the song as a tribute (Billy Gibbons had earlier made a guest appearance on Nickelback’s own song “Rockstar”). This song has also been in an episode of Mountie O’reely titled ‘Mountie O’reely and the Fountain of Youth’ and most recently it was featured during a scene in the 2007 movie Evan Almighty. ZZ Top played this song at halftime of the 2008 FedEx Orange Bowl. The guitar solo was ranked number 43 on Guitar World’s “100 Best Guitar Solos”.
Nowadays the song can be briefly heard in A&E’s American reality TV series; Duck Dynasty.
Graphic adventure computer game Space Quest: the Sarien Encounter features an alien bar showcasing ZZ Top performing Sharp Dressed Man. Sierra, who developed the game, got sued for using their image without permission. Regardless they are featured in the remake.
I will always upvote ZZ Top. RIP Dusty.
But I don’t worry cause my wallet’s fat
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As much as I love ZZ top, and as much as I loved the videos back when they came out, I can’t watch them now.
I feel the same way about most things from the 80’s. Most of it’s so cringeworthy it makes it hard to go back and enjoy most of that decade.
Exactly lol. So many cliches and bullshit
Let me guess, because it shows women in a moderately sexualized context?
Wrong, entirely.
It’s the whole bullshit revenge fantasy and overly exaggerated “villains”.
It’s just horribly written, badly directed, and dumb. The cliches abound in the worst possible way, and it points to a lot of the flaws of the era because of that. It’s the music video equivalent of the pretty girl that dresses plain gets a makeover and removes their glasses and now they rool the skool movies.
They’re a product of the worst of the eighties’ pop culture while having next to zero of the good parts (which are the car and the band, which are still fucking awesome)
Fair enough. Though I don’t think that means it aged badly, all those flaws were valid then as well.
To me, aging badly means it was culturally and socially appropriate at the time but really isn’t any more. Being a shitty or stupid video doesn’t really count for that I would say. Aging badly would be rappers joking about rape and using gay slurs for example.
