Now that I’m 40 I have discovered yet another thing my mother was right about. That thing? John Farnham. Namely, that John Farnham absolutely rocks. Before now I’d always taken my dad’s side, unimpressed with Whispering Jack, more impressed by Willie Nelson. It didn’t help that, growing up, the only song of Farnham’s I really knew was Sadie (The Cleaning Lady). My grandmother was a cleaner, my mother was a cleaner, and then I was too (also the song is terrible).
But none of that matters any longer, because the algorithm that knows me better than I know myself showed me an important video. An opinion-changing video. It was Farnham in 1989 performing to a massive crowd. The video opens with John standing there, long blond 80s hair flowing, his breezy shirt open to the third button, showcasing his sweat-shined chest. He looks like Australia’s answer to Mills & Boon. He’s Millsy and Boony. He looks magnificent, and he sounds equally good, performing his cover of Help by the Beatles – backed by the equally 80s hair of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.
I read some of the comments below the video before I watched it and they were exalting – breathlessly informing us that John is underrated and the best singer in the world, and that his performance of Help was the ENCORE, so he’d already performed for two hours when he got to this so he’s basically God. Reading them, I felt a bit of the usual cultural cringe that can happen when Australians are talking about other Australians. After I’d finished watching, and my goosebumps had subsided, I agreed with them all, and I consider them family. Sorry, Dad – I’m a Farnham girl now.
I’m far from the only one. This particular performance has suddenly become popular among people who do “reaction videos”. If you haven’t come across this phenomenon, it’s just what it sounds like. Someone films themselves watching something, usually over the course of a few minutes and … reacting to it. I have now moved from watching Farnham perform Help (which was an ENCORE performance, by the way), to watching people react to Farnham performing Help. Reaction videos run the gamut within the genre – there are reactions from all sorts of people but my favourites are those from vocal coaches or musicians who not only appreciate them, but can break down exactly what is happening. I now know quite a bit about how amazing Farnham’s “mouth shapes” are.
Since Covid I have watched reaction videos fairly regularly, as a way to feel alive. Hyperbolic but also sort of true. They aren’t all alike – there are reactions to all sorts of things, and they can make you feel different things, like a vending machine of hormones. To feel awe and wonder and get goosebumps, I watch people watch Help. To get into my feelings and cry, I watch people watch Kelly Clarkson perform Piece by Piece on American Idol. Before you dismiss this, even putting aside that Clarkson is actually one of our greatest vocalists (my teeth are bared at you and I’m growling as I say this), it’s an intensely emotional video. I clearly remember the first time I watched it, probably while PMSing. She is heavily pregnant, singing a song about how her dad abandoned her. At some point she starts crying, the audience cries, Keith Urban cries and then I cry.
Watching a reaction video to Clarkson’s performance is like feeling those emotions again. Often the person’s reaction is actually bigger than mine was (me being a monotone Daria type), and it allows me to share in the joy, the sadness or the shock, like a little microdose of emotions.
It’s an easy way to access feelings and to get a jolt of feeling connected to people in a world that more and more rewards emotional numbness. It allows us to experience, dare I say, humanity. It’s why we get eye strain when we show a crush a movie, trying to sneakily watch their reaction and see if they laugh at the right bits, and cry when we did. It helps us to know each other. It’s a way to feel we understand and are understood.
There are theories about “mirror neurons” in our brains that light up when we see other people do something that we have done, helping us feel what they feel, but that theory is heavily debated. I do, however, with no science to back me up whatsoever, feel that empathy must play an important role. Just as I yawn when other people yawn, and feel embarrassed when other people get embarrassed, I cry when I see Keith Urban cry, and when I see people cry at seeing Keith Urban crying. I’m only human, after all.
Reaction videos are not new. If you were online in 2007 and so unfortunate as to remember 2 Girls 1 Cup, you might also remember the reaction videos that went along with them (that link is to an article, don’t worry). The field has certainly grown and they often do quite solid numbers even if they suck – and many get views into the millions.
Ultimately I think people like watching reaction videos because it’s fun to watch other people experience a first, especially if that thing affected you in some way too. From Americans watching AFL for the first time, to people getting horny for Tom Holland’s Umbrella lip sync (an all-time committed performance), to gays and girlies getting emotional watching Kesha hit a whistle tone in her comeback song, to people freaking out watching the infamous Red Wedding scene in Game of Thrones, reaction videos offer us a smorgasbord of human emotion and experience, pure and unadulterated and ready for me to sup upon.
Now, I’m off to watch someone else watch John Farnham sing again.
• Rebecca Shaw is a writer based in Sydney
