Flashback Video: 'City of Crime' by Tom Hanks and Dan Aykroyd

Ever since the dawn of MTV and Friday Night Videos, the music video has significantly impacted musical tastes and pop culture. It might not be as extreme as when the Buggles declared that "Video Killed the Radio Star", but there is no arguing that the music video certainly could make or break a song's popularity. So this regular Flashback Video feature will serve to remember some of the music videos from the great '80s decade that made an impact on me in one way or another.

This issue we will cover "City of Crime" by Tom Hanks and Dan Aykroyd. This song was performed by the stars of the 1987 film Dragnet and was played during the closing credits. Dan Aykroyd is known as a singer especially as his Blues Brothers character "Elwood", but neither he or Hanks would have been expected to perform bars of rap/rhymes. It was the '80s though and rap was crossing over to mainstream at this time, so why not? Yes, this really happened.

Back in 1987, Hanks was not yet the consummate actor that he would later become known as. Prior to Dragnet, he was best known for the TV series Bosom Buddies and had film roles in Splash, Bachelor Party, Volunteers and The Money Pit. Aykroyd had much more experience prior to Dragnet especially from Saturday Night Live and The Blues Brothers, but had also had a huge success with Trading Places and Ghostbusters and moderately with Spies Like Us among others.

The music video for "City of Crime" was directed by Marty Callner who had previously directed many popular music videos including Stevie Nicks "Leather and Lace", Laura Branigan "Gloria", Twisted Sister "We're Not Gonna Take It", Pat Benatar "We Belong" and "Invincible", Whitesnake "Here I Go Again", Heart "Never", "Alone" and "Nothin' at All", Aerosmith "Dude Looks Like a Lady", "Angel" and "Rag Doll",  Poison "Every Rose Has Its Thorn", and Cher "If I Could Turn Back Time" among many others.

The awesome Paula Abdul was hired to provide choreography for the music video and she apparently recycled some of the moves she taught ZZ Top for their 1986 “Velcro Fly” video. Before finding her own pop success, Abdul was a Los Angeles Lakers cheerleader and then a choreographer for movies like Can't Buy Me Love and Coming to America and several music videos by artists such as Janet Jackson, Debbie Gibson and George Michael among others.

Here is the silly music video for "City of Crime" by Tom Hanks and Dan Aykroyd...

"City of Crime" was used during Dragnet's closing credits, but they used an updated electronic version of the classic TV theme song performed by Art of Noise for the film's opening title theme.

Hope you enjoyed another trip back to the '80s thanks to Flashback Video!