ZZ Top Songs: The Stories and Cultural Impact of Their Iconic Music Videos

When most people think of ZZ Top, the first images that come to mind are the slick long beards, shiny suits, pretty girls, and fast cars. However, what is now considered the band's iconic style and sound did not occur naturally, and it certainly wasn't the way the band looked and sounded when they started. This article explores ZZ Top's deliberate transformation from a "little ol' band from Texas" to MTV's darlings.

ZZ Top was founded in 1969 and consisted of guitarist Billy F. Gibbons, bassist Dusty Hill, and drummer Frank Beard. Their high-energy Texas blues style involved Gibbons and Hill taking turns on vocal duties and had a unique blend of classic blues riffs and licks, raw guitar sounds, and a distinctive Texan boogie-woogie feel. The humorous and sexually allusive lyrics fit perfectly into this mix, creating a style and sound that managed to stay true to its blues-influenced Texas roots while still being unlike anything before it.

The band's debut 1971 album is called ZZ Top's First Album, which tells you everything you need to know about the no-nonsense approach in their early days. By 1976, with the release of four more albums — Rio Grande Mud (1972), Tres Hombres (1973), Fandango! (1975), and Tejas (1976) — they had achieved fame across North America and were particularly renowned for their thrilling live performances. Hit singles, including "La Grange" and "Tush," cemented their place in the mainstream.

By the end of the decade, all three band members were exhausted. In 1977, they decided to take a break after seven years of nonstop touring and recording, and each went their separate ways, hoping for a chance to enjoy life for the first time since achieving major success. They reunited in 1979, but things seemed different. Billy and Dusty now had long beards, and the disco craze that was happening at that time influenced the band to investigate adding some synth-generated sounds to their music.

This change made their next album, Deguello, a symbolic bridge between the band's Texas blues origins and what was to come. Introducing keyboards gave the band a more modern and commercial sound, and the band members' twin beards gave them a distinctive look, right in time for the launch of MTV in 1981.

A few years later, as ZZ Top was preparing what would become the Eliminator album, Billy Gibbons was working on preproduction alongside sound engineer Linden Hudson. By now, the songwriting methods and tools had changed, and the two were experimenting with drum machines and synthesizers to create demos for the future songs on the album. This new approach opened the proverbial Pandora's Box, as some of the songs they were creating could only be played live with the help of prerecorded tracks. The "little ol' band from Texas" was no more.

However, the new ZZ Top turned out to be considerably more successful than the old one. They released their new album, Eliminator, in March 1983, and one month later, they followed it with the single and video for one of the songs from the album, "Gimme All Your Lovin.'" The video begins with a vintage car cruising on a long open road and stopping at a gas station, where a young attendant is taken for a ride by the three women inside it, with the band performing in the background.

The song and its video were instant hits, being played in heavy rotation both on radio stations and MTV. It was the perfect representation of the band's new style, mixing old blues sounds with modern synthesizers. Suddenly, the three guys from Texas were global superstars.

The follow-up to "Gimme All Your Lovin'" came three months later in July 1983. "Sharp Dressed Man" opens with a shot of the same vintage hot rod, but this time at night and in urban surroundings. It then features a young man "dressing sharp" for a night out, where he meets the same three girls from the previous video.

The last part of the unofficial trilogy came in 1984, with the video for "Legs." This time, the trio of women and their sleek hot rod arrive at a shoe store to help a shy female clerk take revenge on her bullies and start a new life. Besides the car and the girls, another common element in all three videos is the band drifting in and out of the frame, wearing matching suits.

This three-shot salvo completed the band's transition from a traditional blues sound to a modern synth-infused one. The sexy, funny, and original videos gave them a whole new audience, as reflected by Eliminator's global success. The album sold more than 10 million copies in the U.S. alone and remains iconic to this day.

Although ZZ Top would eventually return to a more traditional blues style in their later years, they'll forever be known by casual audiences for how they looked and sounded during that period in the 1980s. Even the car is iconic, as it's currently displayed at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Museum in Cleveland. As for the beards, you don't have to be a huge music fan to have ZZ Top pop into your head whenever you see a guy sporting a long beard.

ZZ Top's 1980s transformation was and still is controversial, with many critics and fans accusing the band of selling out and becoming too commercial. However, over four decades later, even the sharpest critics can't deny the huge impact their Eliminator album and music videos had on rock's sound and culture. ZZ Top managed to have the best of both worlds, having started out as a grassroots blues band and ending up as a global phenomenon that still fills arenas all over the world to this day.