CAPTAIN VIDEO!: Marie Osmond, "There's No Stopping Your Heart"

Greetings, Videots! Apologies for the long delay between transmissions — our ship got sucked into a MuchMusic wormhole, and the crew has spent the last 18 months fighting off a horde of used sweatbands that escaped from the Planet Reno and were doing the evil bidding of the horrific despot known as Murray the Merciless. Bruised but unbowed, we return to you now with a fresh aerosol-coated artifact from the 1980th Dimension — and speaking of artifacts, hey, it's Marie Osmond, clawing her way back from the precipice of cultural irrelevance in 1985.

For much of the 1970s, Marie Osmond was one of the biggest and brightest stars in the pop culture firmament. A sort of white Janet Jackson, she bobbed up as a teen country star after the group formed by her seemingly endless array of older brothers peeled off a string of pop hits; following that, she became half of a wildly popular duo with her brother Donny. It's true that everything she did was cheesy as hell, including the sum total of her audio and televisual collaborations with Donny, but it's also true that it was cheesy in a way that Americans couldn't get enough of. Featherweight pop songs, variety shows, wholesome singing and dancing beneath bushy bowl cuts and glider-sized lapels — it was exactly what we wanted, five nights a week, right up until the moment we suddenly didn't. The first sign of trouble for Donny and/or Marie was the abject critical and commercial failure of their 1978 movie, Goin' Coconuts:

The following year, their weekly variety show was punted off the air by ABC, leaving the two best-known Osmond siblings to wander the showbiz desert for years. Marie took a stab at a sitcom pilot (the imaginatively titled Marie), which didn't make the schedule; following that, she launched her own variety show (also titled Marie), which puttered around for a couple of years. After spending a few years experiencing diminishing returns on the acting front, she decided to focus on music again, and inked a deal with Curb for her return to country music. Her fifth album, There's No Stopping Your Heart, followed in the summer of 1985.

Now, CAPTAIN VIDEO! doesn't know how much time you've recently devoted to listening to the country hits of the mid-'80s, but if you go into this cold, you're liable to be somewhat surprised that it was considered "country" by any stretch of the imagination. We here on the ship have a passing familiarity with the somewhat countrypolitan work of Dan Seals, who served as a duet partner with Osmond on one of Stopping's hit singles, but even the cheerfully glossy stuff he was known for has more of a country twang than what you'll hear here. That didn't make a lick of difference to country radio listeners, who sent the song to No. 1 on the chart, but in retrospect, it makes for a fascinating example of how arbitrarily genre lines can be drawn.

"There's No Stopping Your Heart," alas, is far from fascinating. CAPTAIN VIDEO! hastens to add that it's also quite far from painful — this is an exceedingly easy listen — but given that it clocks in at under three minutes and it's at least 60 percent chorus, it's hard to give it credit for much more than that. It's the type of all-purpose '80s song that could have been a pop hit, a country hit, or a TV theme song; no matter where it landed, you were destined to be mildly entertained for as long as it lasted and forget the experience as soon as it was over.

As for the video, well, let's just say it gives the impression that Marie Osmond's handlers didn't know quite what to do with her in terms of her public image in 1985. Curb certainly leaned in a "she's all grown up now" direction for the album cover, but when it came time to record the promotional clip for what is ostensibly a passionate love song delivered by a woman who equates her partner's touch to the relaxing bliss of a tropical vacation, they decided to go in a more... uh, family-friendly direction.

The video begins with Marie ending a presumably sold-out concert and then dashing out backstage, where she's immediately swarmed by a weird throng of industry types. A female reporter(?) conducts the two-second equivalent of a musical post-game interview. Some guy gives her a rose. She is accosted for an autograph by the 1985 version of Mason Reese:

After making her way through all these people, Marie makes a split-second outfit change before greeting the next crowd of well-wishers, which seems to be made up of regular fans and lots of paparazzi. Despite everything we know about Marie Osmond's career in the years leading up to the release of this album, it appears that she couldn't go anywhere without being absolutely mobbed.

It's only when she finally makes her way to her limo that Marie is granted some measure of peace — and by "peace," CAPTAIN VIDEO! means "world-weary ennui," because that's the only emotion pop stars are allowed to express when they're seen being chauffeured to their next destination. Yes, she's leading a life of fabulous luxury, the video tells us. But it means putting up with unwashed hordes and then being lonely, so you need to feel bad for Marie Osmond.

On the other hand, it's got to be a little unsettling to roll up to a stop light and catch eyes from this guy:

Marie's ride to the airport is full of longing looks at happy couples, but at least it's brief — and again, despite everything we know about the Osmond family's flagging fortunes during this period, the video tells us she's riding in fuckin' style on her way home from a gig. No tour bus for Marie! No ma'am. Instead, she strides cutely and confidently toward her own private jet.

After touching down from her flight, does Marie have to sit in gridlock, wasting precious moments that could otherwise be spent on far more fabulous pursuits? Gosh, no. Instead, she takes a helicopter to her pink Jeep, which has been conveniently parked on a hill in the middle of absolutely nowhere:

Once she's behind the wheel, Marie reminds us that even though she's a huge star and stuff, she's still a responsible driver. Never mind the fact that there obviously isn't a car for miles — she still takes a moment to make sure her mascara is perfect before she hits the road.

Now, finally, after one final outfit change and one final mode of transportation, Marie Osmond is allowed to make her way from the stage and the unceasing demands of her millions of fans to her home. For nearly three minutes, she's been singing about pining for her lover's supple touch, so she'll definitely pull up into the driveway and be greeted by a hunk of a man — the type of man who's ruggedly handsome and also secure enough in his love for his lady to sit contentedly by the fire while she's off bringing home the bacon. After two verses and 40 choruses, the ladies in the audience will get a little eye candy. Right?

Nope! Ha ha, dummies! Much like Amy Grant six years later, Marie Osmond has secretly been singing a love song to a goddamn child:

"There's No Stopping Your Heart" was one of six Top 40 hits Marie Osmond scored on the country charts between 1985 and 1987. Her jets cooled pretty quickly after that, at which point she returned to screen work, clearing the dial for Donny to mount his own exceedingly unlikely (albeit much briefer) pop comeback with "Soldier of Love" and "Sacred Emotion" toward the end of the decade. Perhaps at some point, we'll cover one of those videos; for now, the CAPTAIN and his crew are more than content to leave you with this clip in its entirety. Until next time, Videots!