"Jeopardy" | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Single by The Greg Kihn Band | ||||
from the album Kihnspiracy | ||||
B-side | "Fascination" | |||
Released | 1983 | |||
Genre | Power pop | |||
Length | 3:47 | |||
Label | Beserkley Records | |||
Writer(s) | Greg Kihn, Steve Wright | |||
Producer(s) | Matthew King Kaufman | |||
The Greg Kihn Band singles chronology | ||||
|
"Jeopardy" is a hit song released in 1983 by The Greg Kihn Band on their album Kihnspiracy. It is the band's first and only Top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, reaching number 2 in May 1983 (behind Michael Jackson's "Beat It") and also hitting number 1 on the dance charts for two weeks a month earlier. The song also reached number 63 on the UK Singles Chart, becoming the band's only charting song in the UK. The song is written in the key of D minor. The song switches to the relative F Major Key in the song's Pre-Chorus.
The song was featured in a surrealistic music video depicting a wedding disintegrating into a nightmare.
The video opens with a bride-to-be getting out of her car screen right and enters a church. Soon afterwards a groom-to-be portrayed by Kihn himself gets out of another car screen left and enters an adjoining church. Entering in the groom's back entrance, he is readied for his impending marriage to another bride by his parents, who nudge him into the church's main hall.
Inside the main hall, a children's choir is seen singing the song's first chorus, the minister, the rest of the groom's family, as well as the groom's ushers portrayed by Kihn's band. The (other) bride is led by her father, who rather forcefully gives her to Kihn. As the minister recites the vow questions, Kihn turns his head backwards multiple times, as he cannot help feeling that something is amiss at the ceremony. He looks at his parents and notices that they are handcuffed together.
The minister asks Kihn for the ring. He looks at this bride's parents and sees that the hands that are being held together in a handshake of friendship merge and morph into a bone-destroying blob. The minister asks Kihn for the ring again. He looks at his aunt and uncle and notices that they are literally joined at the hip. The minister asks Kihn for the ring a third time, this time using sign language.
He reaches into his coat pocket and finds the ring, puts it on the bride's hand and takes off the veil. The bride proves to be a zombie, who lets out an earth-shattering scream. This is a possible reference to Bride of the Monster. Kihn screams in horror at the sight. The entire congregation turns into zombies possibly referencing Night of the Living Dead except for Kihn, who makes his first attempt at escaping.