This cover of a Paul Simon song by The Bangles achieved more popularity than the original. The clips show the band fake playing live in front of walls of tube TV’s setup to look futuristic, interspersed with scenes from the film Less Than Zero. Most of the movie clips involve Andrew McCarthy and Jamie Gertz making out, though we do get to see Robert Downey Jr. and his cocaine-fueled antics. For a while there, it looked like Downey Jr. would end up like his character Julien in the movie. Thank goodness he got clean and flipped the script.

According to this post on Mental Floss about Less Than Zero, the author of the book which became the movie, Brad Easton Ellis, estimates if the book were written today, it would be about 20 pages long.

Ellis thinks the advent of cell phones would make the book “20 pages long” today. “There’s a long stretch in the book where Clay is driving around looking for Julian, stopping off at friends’ houses to use their phones,” he said in an interview with The Paris Review. “He even stops in at a McDonald’s to use a pay phone. But people can find each other very easily now. A single text—‘Dude, where the f–k are you? I want my money’—would take care of three-fourths of the action in the book.”

Guitarist Vicki Peterson had a tough time adapting the riff from the original song, since it was played on a 12-string acoustic. She had to “rock it up” for The Bangles version.

“Hazy Shade of Winter” was also featured on the Netflix series Stranger Things, episode 2, just as the credits started to roll.

→ The Bangles - Hazy Shade of Winter