In an interview with AV Club, “Weird Al” revealed that his record label disliked the song so much that they refused to fund it as a single release. Determined to bring his vision to light, “Weird Al” paid for the music video himself. The end result was a music video created mostly with public-domain footage from the Cold War.
The Daily Herald reports that this was the first music video Yankovic ever directed. The video was reportedly widely played on MTV during the December holiday seasons throughout the 1980s (per the 2013 book “Armageddon Films FAQ: All That’s Left to Know About Zombies, Contagions, Aliens, and the End of the World as We Know It!“).
But after the devastating toll of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2001, the United States was stunned by the deaths of nearly 3,000 people (via Britannica). As the nation was reeling and grieving from the unexpected attack on civilians, the area became known as “Ground Zero.”
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