How Motley Crue Conquered The 80s’ With Their Classic Music Video

Music has always been about pushing boundaries and bravely facing the outcome of it. With Mötley Crüe, they were the textbook, work-hard-play-harder kind of group, epitomizing the stereotypical rock musicians’ booze and sex-filled attitude that’s beyond imagination, to the point that it was safe to assume that the Crue’s drug and alcohol use significantly exceeded that of everyone else.

But one thing they never did was to be defined by someone else with their music. Sure, they accepted their bad boy image and even revealed it in the 2019 biographical film, The Dirt, but when it comes to making music, they were a distinct entity, merely copied by those who followed them.

YouTube content creator Professor Of Rock wonderfully explained all the details of the one song that made Mötley Crüe so incredibly popular in the 80s. That one song in question was their 1985 power ballad “Home Sweet Home,” a single from the album Theatre of Pain.

Bassist Nikki Sixx shared details of the song in the Mötley Crüe: The End – Live In Los Angeles DVD. “It was a response to us from being gone so long during Shout At The Devil [1983 album and tour]. It was our first time. A tour bus picked us up at our little tiny apartments and we took off to go play some shows, and 18 months later we got dropped back in our little apartments. I was calling Tommy like, ‘Hey, what are you doing?’ ‘Sitting here. What are you doing?’ ‘I don’t know what to do.’ ‘I don’t know what to do either. Want to grab a beer? How about a bindle of cocaine – that too. And a couple of strippers.’”

He continued: “We didn’t know what to do, so we started writing songs for Theater Of Pain, and ‘Home Sweet Home’ started to come out. The lyrics came out of that feeling of being gone so long and wanting to come back, which is ironic, right? Because all you ever want is to get in a band and go on the road, but then you’re on the road and you want to come home.”

“Home Sweet Home” displeased the band’s record label, Elektra Records, so much that for the song’s music video, they refused to fund it. So, for the MV to happen, the members have to take money out of their pockets. Luckily, the video for “Home Sweet Home” became irresistible to fans that they couldn’t get enough of it, prompting the MTV channel to create a “Crue Rule,” which meant dropping videos from their request line 30 days after their MTV premiere.

Check out Professor of Rock’s explanation below.