Released 1981 Genre New wave
synthpop Label Warner Bros. | Format 7" Length 3:35 | |
Writer(s) Gerald Casale
Mark Mothersbaugh | ||
"Beautiful World" is a song by the American new wave band Devo, written by Gerald Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh. It appears on their fourth studio album New Traditionalists.
Contents
Most of the songs on New Traditionalists are darker and more direct than on previous Devo albums. The exception to this is "Beautiful World," whose message seems optimistic at first but changes as the song progresses. This is made even clearer by the song's promotional video.
Promotional music video
"Beautiful World" is considered by many fans and critics to be Devo's greatest music video, setting the tune to a series of connected images from film archives. The video features the character Booji Boy prominently, as he initially watches scenes of beautiful women, futuristic cars and other happy elements, which by the end of the song have been replaced by images of race riots, the Ku Klux Klan, World War I, famine in Africa, car crashes and nuclear explosions, which puts a much darker slant on the song's lyrics. The video was slightly censored for broadcasts on the ABC-TV music show Countdown. A small segment of archive footage depicting a woman on fire was considered unsuitable for the show's early evening timeslot—despite the fact that the 'flames' were animated, not real—and this censored version is still screened occasionally on the ABC's music video series rage, including a mid-1990s episode hosted by Devo.
Track listing
- "Beautiful World" – 3:32
- "Enough Said" – 3:25