Looking For Clues

In this song, Robert Palmer paranoid and also confounded by a girl. He's looking for clues to find out what's going on, but is coming up empty. "I can never remember exactly what I was thinking about when I wrote 'Clues,' but I'm still like the character in the song - frightened by the sound of the telephone, which is a strange basis for a lyric," Palmer wrote in his Addictions: Volume 1 collection. "I must have found it pretty easy to write though because there are an awful lot of verses.

Musically, this song was on vanguard with synthesized beats programmed on a prototype sequencer. Palmer was steeped in blues, rock, and Caribbean sounds but went boldly in an electronic direction in the '80s. He was eventually able to refine that sound into some huge hits, starting with "Addicted To Love" in 1985.

The music video was way ahead of its time, compositing Palmer into a world where everything around him is huge. It was one of the few high-end videos MTV had available on August 1, 1981, their first day of broadcasting, and they gave it plenty of airplay - it was the 23rd video they played, following Phil Collins' "In The Air Tonight."