I’d been looking for a couple more music videos to flash back to, and the death of Tawny Kitaen prompted me to go back and watch Whitesnake’s “Here I Go Again” from 1987, which starred the lead singer David Coverdale’s then-girlfriend but future bride. Tawny Kitaen had a tough life beset with some demons, but on music videos she did leave an indelible mark: Thanks to this performance she became, in effect, the dictionary definition of a Video Vixen.
The video it makes no sense with the song, which is all about how he’s walking along the lonely street of dreams on his own, even though he’s shown driving a very FRIENDLY street of dreams with a comely companion. But talk about starting off with a bang. They do not withhold the car-hood cartwheels. They OPEN WITH THEM. And the rest is a delightfully choppy montage of writhing, splits, hair-flipping, face-sucking, and unsafe imitation-driving practices, intercut with too-long close-ups of David Coverdale singing. I imagine the editor pitching a version of it that was much more Tawny-heavy, and Coverdale being like, “What? No! MY HAIR IS THE TRUE STAR.” He was… not entirely correct.
