![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/An-80s-thing-The-origins-of-Robert-Palmers-iconic-and-controversial-Palmer-Girls-Far-Out-Magazine-11.jpeg\")
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(Credits: Far Out \/ YouTube Stills)<\/p>\n
Tue 27 January 2026 15:00, UK <\/p>\n
MTV<\/a> officially launched in America in 1981, but it took a few years to really establish itself as a cultural institution. <\/p>\n As a growing number of households started paying for cable television, more and more people were drawn in by the tractor beam of 24\/7 music videos starring the biggest pop stars on the planet: Madonna, Michael Jackson, Prince, Bowie, and\u2026Robert Palmer?<\/p>\n Yes, he didn\u2019t quite look the part: a 36-year-old, straight-faced bloke from Scarborough, dressed and coiffed like a Wall Street stockbroker, but Palmer had been paying his dues and selling increasing numbers of records for a decade, eventually bringing him into the inner circle of arguably MTV\u2019s biggest pop band of the moment, Duran Duran. <\/p>\n In 1985, Palmer formed a new side project with several members of Duran Duran, called the Power Station, and it was soon clear that this was gonna be old Bob\u2019s big year. With a pair of Power Station hits rising up the charts in both the UK and US, Palmer quickly went to work on his next solo album, which came out in November to even greater success. Titled Riptide, the record reached the top ten on both sides of the Atlantic, and included the biggest hit of Palmer\u2019s career up to that point and one of the defining tunes of its era, \u2018Addicted to Love\u2019.<\/p>\n This being the MTV age, though, it wasn\u2019t merely a banger of a soul-pop melody that made a hit. Palmer<\/a> needed a memorable music video to pair with \u2018Addicted to Love\u2019, and he enlisted the help of the famed British fashion photographer Terence Donovan to hatch an idea. The result was one of the most talked about, oft-imitated, occasionally maligned, and instantly memorable visuals of the 1980s: \u2018the Palmer Girls\u2019.<\/p>\n You might recognise the imagery without even having seen the original music video: Palmer in full Miami Vice mode in the foreground with his microphone stand, while a band of identically dressed supermodels in heavy make-up and slicked down hair pretend to play instruments behind him: a weird, lifeless, mannequin-esque pantomime that was both hailed by the fashion community and attacked by feminist groups.<\/p>\n \u201cIt has captured the public\u2019s attention amazingly,\u201d Palmer said in 1989, after the Palmer Girls had made repeat appearances in his videos for three other songs: \u2018I Didn\u2019t Mean to Turn You On\u2019, \u2018Simply Irresistible\u2019, and \u2018Change His Ways.\u2019 \u201cAfter two and a half years of maintaining that look, I guess it must be fairly intriguing. When all these videos are seen five years from now, though, I think people will say, \u2018Oh, yes, that must have been an \u201880s thing\u2019. It has that quality to it,\u201d he remarked.<\/p>\n Palmer<\/a>, who died in 2003, was spot on with his prediction, and \u2018the Palmer Girls\u2019, who were played by models Julie Pankhurst, Patty Kell, Mak Gilchrist, Julia Bolino, and Kathy Davies, were never going to fit the evolving tastes of the 1990s. But, despite criticisms of the videos and their depiction of women as silent sex props, Palmer felt like most viewers understood the tongue-in-cheek nature of the imagery.<\/p>\n \u201cIt has seemed to take a long time for the sense of humour to come through,\u201d he said, \u201cbut I think people are finally getting it. It\u2019s really meant to be a campy kind of nonsense\u201d.<\/p>\n He gave all credit for the video idea to Terence Donovan, who spent the last few years of his life (he died in 1996) having to repeatedly discuss \u2018the Palmer Girls\u2019, to his increasing annoyance. Fortunately, Donovan\u2019s original 1985 pitch for the idea was preserved and posted to a French fan blog<\/a> in 2024.<\/p>\n \u201cThis film should have a throbbing satanic quality, raw but saturated in the unyielding quality that really sensational women possess,\u201d Donovan wrote, \u201c\u2026I would simply dress a group of international models in Azzedine Ala\u00efa dresses. This designer at the moment produces clothes that make men become quite irrational, and women seem to admire him\u2026 I will organise an absolutely glamorous make-up artiste. The hair should be slicked flat and shiny\u2026 The camera will be close and will sidle over these repositories of sensuality (to paraphrase Churchill)\u2026 I think it would be very dynamic to assemble the band briefly, then evaporate. It would generate a great deal of visual internal energy.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ YouTube Stills) Tue 27 January 2026 15:00, UK MTV officially launched in America in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":433273,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[20278,236,114310,88,3976,29277,205253],"class_list":["post-433272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-1980s","tag-celebrities","tag-duran-duran","tag-entertainment","tag-fashion","tag-mtv","tag-robert-palmer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/433273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/An-80s-thing-The-origins-of-Robert-Palmers-iconic-and-controversial-Palmer-Girls1-Far-Out-Magazine-1.jpeg\")
<\/a>Still from Robert Palmer\u2019s \u2018Addicted to Love\u2019 music video. (Credits: Far Out \/ YouTube Still)<\/p>\n