Peak
1
Weeks
22
Score
4,262
Chart Year
1985
The music video for "Broken Wings" was directed by Oley Sassone and filmed in black and white.[5] It features lead vocalist/bassist Richard Page driving through the desert in a classic Ford Thunderbird, the first allusion to birds. There is a scene where Page is sitting in a church when a Harris's Hawk flies in through the window and lands next to him on the pew and they exchange a gaze. The full band is also featured in performance scenes. Also appearing in the video are an unknown man and woman dancing tango. They are only shown from the waist down. At the end of the video Page is seen next to the Thunderbird with the vehicle's hood open.
This classic pop song was inspired by a book the lyricist John Lang read called The Broken Wings, which was written by the Lebanese poet-philosopher Kahlil Gibran. The book, which was written in 1912, is a story of a love that is doomed by social convention. Its theme is echoed in this song: picking up the pieces of your life and moving on. There is a note of heartbreak, however, as the singer is asking the girl to spread her wings and fly away, hoping that love will bring her back. The line, "Take these broken wings and learn to fly" appears in The Beatles song "Blackbird." Paul McCartney and John Lennon both drew from the work of Kahlil Gibran, as the first two lines of The Beatles "Julia" came from Gibran's 1926 poem Sand And Foam: "Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it just to reach you, Julia." John Lang wrote this song with Mr. Mister frontman Richard Page and guitarist Steve George. According to Page, they were at his home in California when the three of them came up with the song in about 20 minutes and recorded it on Page's tape machine. This was the first single from Mr. Mister's second album. Their record company, RCA, wanted to release an uptempo song first, but the band fought them on it and won out. Released ahead of the album, the song went to #1 US in December 1985, marking a breakthrough for the band, whose biggest hit from their first album was "Hunters of the Night," which peaked at #57. The follow-up single, "Kyrie," also went to #1. The video shows Richard Page driving a Thunderbird convertible through a parched Los Angeles landscape. He comes to a church, where a hawk arrives for divine guidance, and continues his journey, which takes him to the ocean. The black-and-white clip was directed by Oley Sassone, who would go on to direct episodes of Xena: Warrior Princess and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. In our interview with Sassone, he explained: "The subtext of the story and what I wanted the audience to feel was our hero's own backstory in his mind. The tango dancers, juxtaposed with the images of him getting lost while driving, tossing a map and instead following the hawk overhead was, symbolically, his own soul, his own voice deep inside telling him to carry on - to lead him to a new path, a new beginning." Report this ad VH1 went on the air in 1985, the same year this song was released. The video did very well on the network, and also on MTV, which was only four years old but had become kingmaker in the industry. The driving scenes in the video were shot at the oil fields near Los Angeles International Airport, and also along the Pacific Coast Highway in Palos Verdes. The church is the San Fernando Mission, a historic building in the Mission Hills district of Los Angeles. Clay Aiken covered this on his 2006 album A Thousand Different Ways, adding an original poem spoken by Erin Taylor. Richard Page of Mr. Mister was very complimentary of Aiken's version of the song. In 2001, this song was sampled for a posthumous Tupac Shakur song "Until The End Of Time," which featured Richard Page. It only reached #52 in the US but peaked at #4 in the UK.
Baby, don't understand Why we can't just hold on To each other's hands This time might be the last I fear, unless I make it all too clear I need you so Take these broken wings And learn to fly again Learn to live so free When we hear the voices sing The book of love will open up And let us in Take these broken wings Baby, think tonight We can take what was wrong And make it right Baby, it's all I know That you're half of the flesh And blood makes me whole I need you so So take these broken wings And learn to fly again Learn to live so free When we hear the voices sing The book of love will open up And let us in Take these broken wings You've got to learn to fly, learn to live, love so free When we hear the voices sing The book of love will open up and let us in yeah, yeah Let us in Let us in Baby, it's all I know that you're half of the flesh And blood that makes me whole Yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, yeah So take these broken wings And learn to fly again Learn to live so free And when we hear the voices sing The book of love will open up And let us in Take these broken wings You got to learn to fly Learn to live and love so free And when we hear the voices sing The book of love will open up for us and let us in Yeah, yeah Yeah, yeah
| Week | Chart Date | Position | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sep 21, 1985 | 84 | 42 |
| 2 | Sep 28, 1985 | 66 | 60 |
| 3 | Oct 5, 1985 | 50 | 76 |
| 4 | Oct 12, 1985 | 41 | 85 |
| 5 | Oct 19, 1985 | 35 | 91 |
| 6 | Oct 26, 1985 | 27 | 99 |
| 7 | Nov 2, 1985 | 20 | 106 |
| 8 | Nov 9, 1985 | 11 | 115 |
| 9 | Nov 16, 1985 | 7 | 119 |
| 10 | Nov 23, 1985 | 4 | 122 |
| 11 | Nov 30, 1985 | 3 | 123 |
| 12 | Dec 7, 1985 | 1 | 125 |
| 13 | Dec 14, 1985 | 1 | 125 |
| 14 | Dec 21, 1985 | 2 | 124 |
| 15 | Dec 28, 1985 | 7 | 119 |
| 16 | Jan 4, 1986 | 7 | 119 |
| 17 | Jan 11, 1986 | 9 | 117 |
| 18 | Jan 18, 1986 | 21 | 105 |
| 19 | Jan 25, 1986 | 36 | 90 |
| 20 | Feb 1, 1986 | 52 | 74 |