ビデオ。
ルーサーのビデオにセレブ続々登場です。
病気入院中のルーサー・ヴァンドロスの新作アルバム『ダンス・ウィズ・マイ・ファーザー』は依然好調な売れ行きを見せているが、同アルバムからの最初のシングル「ダンス・ウィズ・マイ・ファーザー」のプロモーション用ビデオクリップが製作されている。
ルーサーは、4月半ばから入院中のために、このビデオには顔を出せないが、多くの友人ミュージシャンたちが、ときに口パクなどで、この曲に参加する。
登場するのは、スティーヴィー・ワンダー、ビヨンセなどのほか、テレビ番組『アメリカン・アイドル』に出演しレコードデビューし、一躍注目されているシンガー、ルーベン・スタッダード、モニカ、ブライアン・マックナイト、ジョニー・ギル、ジャスミン・ガイなど。
ビデオを監督したダイアン・マーテルによれば、「すばらしいパフォーマーへの見事なラヴレターで、感動的で、美しい」という。マーテルはこの映像を、去る6月23日に行われたＢＥＴ（ブラック・エンタテインメント・テレヴィジョン）の『第3回ＢＥＴアワード』の授賞式で撮影した。
ビデオは7月第2週に編集されるが、初オンエア日などは未定。
また、ルーサー・ヴァンドロスは、アルバムがナンバーワンになった週に、それまで入院していたウェイル・コーネル・メディカル・センターを退院、別のリハビリテーション・センターに移動したという。母親、友人たちの愛の力が、ルーサーに届き退院となったのか。
Video Valentine for Vandross
Mon Jul 7, 6:15 PM ET Add Entertainment – E! Online to My Yahoo!
By Joal Ryan
The power of love seems to be working for Luther Vandross.
Hospitalized and only partially conscious since suffering a stroke nearly three months ago, the R&B legend is nonetheless at work on a new video, with the help of some famous friends.
Stevie Wonder, Beyonce Knowles and American Idol’s Ruben Studdard are among those who have lent their mugs and, in some cases, lip-synching talents to a video clip for the Vandross single, “Dance with My Father,” according to Monday’s Los Angeles Times.
The song is the title track from the crooner’s latest album. The collection was completed before his stroke, and released June 10.
Wonder and Knowles both worked with Vandross on the album. Others, like Studdard, are just big fans–literally.
“It was emotional, beautiful, a love letter to a wonderful performer,” video director Diane Martel says in the Times.
Martel shot the cameos for the video June 24 at the 3rd Annual BET Awards in Los Angeles. Wonder, Knowles and Studdard were all captured there. So, too, were Monica, Brian McKnight (news), Johnny Gill and actors Jasmine Guy and Damon Wayans (news).
Each celeb was asked to mouth the words to the Vandross song, offer a greeting to the singer, or simply pose for the camera, ideally with their own fathers or children, in keeping with the clip’s family-first theme, the newspaper says.
“Dance with My Father” is a tribute to Vandross’ own father, who died when the future Grammy winner was 7.
In the Times, Martel describes the video as much as a valentine to Vandross as it is to fathers.
The 52-year-old Vandross has not appeared in public since being found unconscious in his Manhattan apartment on April 16.
While he endured a tracheotomy and battled pneumonia in the weeks after, the singer began showing what was termed “the first signs of awareness” in late May.
Last month, in the same week Dance with My Father was hitting stores and moving up the charts, Vandross was deigned steady enough to leave the intensive care unit. The same day his album landed at number one on the album charts, Vandross checked out of New York’s Weill Cornell Medical Center and entered an undisclosed rehabilitation facility.
Since the BET Awards shoot, Martel says she’s received contributions from other famous types–it’s not known whom–in the form of family photos, depicting the celebs with their dads.
Work on the video is expected to be completed this week, the Times says. It was not immediately known when the clip would debut on the air.
Dance with My Father sold nearly 450,000 copies in its first week in stores, the fastest moving album of Vandross’ career, which has included the hits “Power of Love/Love Power” and “Here and Now.”