Paula Abdul - Straight Up

JUL 01 1989 · 12:00

Paula Abdul - Straight Up (1989) Director: David Fincher Era: Late MTV Golden Age / New Jack Swing Crossover (1988–1989) - Peak era of choreography-driven dance-pop videos; black-and-white minimalism as high-concept aesthetic; debut of future Hollywood auteur David Fincher in music video form Tier 1 cultural artifact. One of the most formally significant music videos of the 1980s: a pre-feature-film David Fincher directorial work, a career-defining performance by Paula Abdul at the peak of her dance-pop ascent, and a benchmark for the choreography-driven black-and-white studio aesthetic. The video's four 1989 MTV VMA wins, including the inaugural Best Dance Video award, confirm its period-defining institutional status. Essential for any scholarly or archival treatment of late-1980s pop video, MTV's Golden Age, or Fincher's visual development. Context: Released February 1989, 'Straight Up' arrived at a pivot point in pop music video history, the moment when MTV heavy rotation could break a single ahead of any traditional promotional infrastructure. The song had reached the Hot 100 top 20 before a video existed, a commercially anomalous inversion of the standard video-then-chart model. The resulting video crystallized several concurrent cultural forces: Paula Abdul's dual identity as both a professional Hollywood choreographer (former Laker Girl, Janet Jackson's choreographer) and pop performer; David Fincher's emerging cinematic visual language in commercial short-form work; and the broader late-1980s fascination with the dancer-as-celebrity. The black-and-white minimalism elevated what could have been a routine performance clip into a deliberate art statement, positioning the video, and Abdul, as aspirationally serious within a landscape of garish, color-saturated MTV contemporaries. The 1989 MTV VMA sweep (four awards) cemented the video's status as a formal benchmark for the genre. Director notes: Fincher directed 'Straight Up' through Propaganda Films, dated 01/03/89, with Producer Bob Tinell, Cinematographer Mark Plummer, and Editor Jim Haygood. The video was shot in mid-January 1989 in a minimalist white-cyclorama studio setting, rendered entirely in black and white, a Fincher signature technique he would revisit in Madonna's 'Vogue' (1990). The song had already ascended to the Hot 100 top 20 before the video was filmed. The video swept four MTV VMAs in 1989: Best Female Video, Best Dance Video, Best Editing, and Best Choreography. Fincher also directed Abdul's 'The Way That You Love Me,' 'Forever Your Girl,' and 'Cold Hearted' videos from the same album era, establishing a sustained creative collaboration. Fincher has described the music video era as his personal 'film school' for learning efficiency within tight budgets and schedules.