"Twilight Zone" is a 1982 hit by Dutch band Golden Earring. It was written by the band's guitarist George Kooymans, who got the inspiration from a book by Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Identity. "Twilight Zone" appears on their 1982 album Cut and pays tribute to the 1960s television series The Twilight Zone. It spent more than half a year (27 weeks) on the U.S. Pop charts. It was the group's sole Top 10 Pop single on the US Billboard Hot 100 (the song reached #16 on the Cashbox chart) and hit No. 1 on the Billboard Top Album Tracks chart, the band's only No. 1 hit in America.
Lead vocals are divided between Kooymans and Barry Hay. Each sings lead for one half of the first verse (first Kooymans, then Hay), and Hay sings lead for the second verse with backing by Kooymans and provides the spoken lines in the introduction and first verse. Kooymans sings lead on the choruses, backed by Hay.
In the 1990s, the song was included on a volume of Rhino Records' New Wave Hits of the '80s series. The music video was featured on Volume One of the VHS companion compilation.
The music video, directed by Dick Maas, features a storyline with lead singer Barry Hay as an espionage agent who is apprehended by three henchmen (played by the other members of the band).
The music video was one of the first to feature a cinematic storyline and dance choreography and was a hit on the fledgling MTV network (in somewhat edited form, as the original European cut was notable for a sequence featuring a topless woman), helping the song to become the second international hit for the band.[4] Golden Earring followed the success with an extensive tour of the USA, Canada and Europe. MTV commissioned the band to shoot a movie of the final 'homecoming' concert of the tour in the Netherlands. The concert film, also directed by Dick Maas, included a brief introductory segment which was an extension of the Twilight Zone video; one writer described it as a "sharp looking video skit about spies or something", but criticized the actually 16mm concert footage as "grainy" and "washy yellow." The concert was released in 1984 as Live from The Twilight Zone along with an album of the concert titled Something Heavy Going Down: Live From The Twilight Zone, it aired on MTV and was published as video on VHS, Beta and Laserdisc.
The Cut album cover's image of the jack of diamonds playing card being shredded by a bullet is used in the video and represents the life of the rogue agent.
Golden Earring was a Dutch rock band, founded in 1961 in The Hague as The Golden Earrings (the definite article was dropped in 1967, while the "s" was dropped in 1969).They achieved worldwide fame with their international hit songs "Radar Love" in 1973, which went to number one on the Dutch charts, reached the top ten in the United Kingdom, and went to number thirteen on the United States charts, "Twilight Zone" in 1982, and "When the Lady Smiles" in 1984. During their career they have had nearly 30 top-ten singles on the Dutch charts while releasing 25 studio albums.
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