Released on YouTube in 2016, the music video for The Protomen’s hit song “Light Up the Night” remains the band’s only foray beyond their music into more cinematic fare, though the band has remained active to this day, 10 years later. Sitting at over sixteen minutes including credits, the video is ambitious for an independent music group, as much a short sci-fi narrative film as a visual complement to their most successful original song. It possesses multiple dialogue interludes- between verses and choruses, as well as a prologue and epilogue to the music itself, emulates the general aesthetic signifiers of legitimate cinema, and employs CGI visual effects to bring its futuristic dystopia to life. For these reasons the video is reminiscent of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”, a similarly lengthy music video with a likewise prominent cinematic component. This is perhaps not coincidence, as not only do both videos establish themselves as send-ups to genre fiction (horror for Jackson, science fiction for the Protomen), but the Protomen’s music video is itself a pastiche of the 1980s popular culture which “Thriller” belonged to, containing various references to the sci-fi films of the decade. Likewise, the song itself, and the album which it comes from, The Father of Death, leverages a sound inspired by pop rock and synth songs of the 80s. 

 Since the release of The Father of Death, the band has continued to perform and compose music in this style, reconstructing an impression of the 1980s defined by the sci-fi pop culture it produced and the music which has, in the public memory, come to define what the decade meant aesthetically. This interests me, however, because not only did the band not originate with a substantially different sound, but the entire reason the Protomen employed such a specific style in its music for “Light Up the Night” and The Father of Death was as a narrative complement: The Protomen produces rock operas based on the Capcom video game franchise Mega Man, and The Father of Death functions as a prequel to their self-titled debut album, The Protomen. While the band has not fully foregone its roots as fan creators providing their own twist on the series, those foundations have increasingly receded over the years. The band, while still inspired by the characters and status quo of the games, has minimized these connections in favor of strengthening its connection to this exaggerated memorialization of 80s media, a decision which presumably helped expand their audience- all the more so given the broader explosion in 80s nostalgia which followed their second album. In this essay, I position “Light Up the Night” as not only a cinematic extension of the musical homage work done in the band’s discovery from The Father of Death onwards, but as part of the band’s efforts to now consciously pivot to ride the wave of 80s nostalgic throwbacks which emerged in the 2010s- as possibly one of the earliest of note.

First formed in 2003 to create music for an assignment at Middle Tennessee State University (Clark), the Protomen originated as a group of fans adapting the story of the games to music; their debut was a rock opera album released independently in 2005, retroactively titled Act 1. Changing the all-ages, cartoony utopia of the games into a pessimistic, dystopian epic tragedy, the album narrates the story of Dr. Thomas Light and his robotic sons Proto Man and Mega Man, who attempt to overthrow the regime of Dr. Albert Wily and his army of robotic enforcers, only to fail due to the refusal of the city’s masses to join them in the fight. The first album’s sound clearly belies the band’s humble origins, possessing amateurish yet intentionally experimental recording quality and mixing (Clark), with a underground noise rock style accompanied by basic electronic synths. The first album’s deliberately distorted, distinctly garage band affect abounds with passion and creativity, but also reflects the band’s limited experience and resources starting out. It signifies them as amateur creators producing a fan project for the Mega Man franchise, using the means available to them.

Several years later, in 2009, the Protomen then released the second act in their albums’ overarching story, The Father of Death. This release acted as a prequel narrative to the first album, exploring how Albert Wily came to power over the City, and how Thomas Light was motivated to create Proto Man to oppose him. This album demonstrates a notable leap forward in the band’s technical and compositional skills and employs clearly recognizable musical genres to periodize its narrative, emphasizing its placement within the first album’s past. Notably however, The Father of Death does not solely apply the 80s-inspired style of “Light Up the Night”: the first half, taking place before the rise of robotics, adopts the instrumentation and riffs of music from Western films and old country, reminiscent of Johnny Cash’s “Ghost Rider”: acoustic guitars, brass, heavy basslines, and dramatic orchestral swells. After this first half comes a time skip, conveyed by a transitional piece which marks the transformation of the City into a mechanized megalopolis dependent upon robotic labor, automated infrastructure, and an omnipresent media-surveillance apparatus. This shift is conveyed musically by a gradual shift mid-track from the Western sound of the first half into the retro-synthwave style which defines the album’s second half, a style which evokes Journey, Survivor, and John Cafferty with its guitar riffs, synths and pop tempos. It was this style proved the more consequential of the two employed by the album.

Going by YouTube views, The Father of Death has enjoyed notably more success and attention than the first album overall; in particular, “Light Up the Night” became the most popular song of the album, with over 4 million views on its earliest upload in 2011 (Light Up the Night), over 3 million views for its official upload in 2014 (The Protomen), and 17 million plays on Spotify, making it the highest viewed or listened of the band’s original songs. In addition, the song was included on Rock Band 4’s setlist upon its release in 2015 (Bürki). Seven years later in 2016, the Protomen’s YouTube channel released a music video of the song to further capitalize on the song’s success and visualize the narrative which the songs implied through their lyrics and notebooks, specifically covering the events of “Keep Quiet,” “Light Up the Night”, and “The Fall”. 

Ultimately, the music video engages in the same activity as the rest of The Father of Death, functioning as a pastiche of recognizable signifiers of the 1980s; however, whereas the music of the album emulates the stylings of popular 80s groups like Styx, the video reinforces its periodization via graphic and filmic references instead. In addition to adapting the album’s archetypal plot about rebellious protagonists fighting against the ruling powers of a technocratic dystopia visually marked by class disparity (indicated by cuts between dilapidated concrete ghettos and glossy edifices of glass and metal), the video relies heavily on reference to define itself: the green-helmeted Sniper is a robotic killer whose leather jacket evokes the Terminator, while Kyle Reese’s future-era gear becomes the uniform of the Protomen during their live performance, and Joe’s tragic fate evokes Reese’s own demise. The shot of Light climbing the stairs to his dilapidated apartment evokes similar shots of the Bradbury Building from Blade Runner, and the wireframe graphics of the radar Light uses to track Joe resemble similar radars from the landing scenes in both Escape from New York and Aliens, evoking their retro-futuristic conceptions of computer-generated graphics. Further musical references exist in the video as well: the metal faces and jumpsuits of the robotic enforcers beating the band’s patrons bring to mind the robots from Styx’s own dystopian rock opera Kilroy Was Here. In this manner, the video even more so than the song or the album expresses the postmodern logic of the pastiche’s construction of the past via the self-conscious reproduction of now decontextualized signifiers (Sperb 14). These references depend on audience foreknowledge of their significance for comprehension and therefore appreciation; they presume a viewer who is already familiar with the landscape of 80s media which the music endeavors to replicate the affect of.

As stated, within The Father of Death, the employment of periodized sound styles was a narrative tool intended to reflect the album’s existence within the past of the overarching plot; specificity was, in a sense, irrelevant to the application of 80s aesthetic as that aesthetic was simply meant to indicate a stage of history between the pre-digital connotations of the first half’s Western style and the first album’s contemporary sound. This application may have been guilty of what Jason Sperb describes as the use of pastiche to suggest a teleological, inevitable progression of style and convention (8), but it nonetheless worked in its function, and alongside the first half indicated an experimentation with different styles of music.

However, with subsequent albums and output by the band- the music video included- the band continued to pursue songs which operated within the retro-synth style of the album’s second half specifically. In addition to selecting “Light Up the Night” and its Journey-esque sound for their first (and currently sole) music video, the band’s follow-up was Present: A Night of Queen in 2010, a tribute album to Queen. Their next album was The Cover-Up in 2015, which consisted of covers of famous 80s songs from a wider variety of artists. As opposed to the specificity of Queen, this album selects tracks which sonically resemble the songs of Act 2, such as Kenny Loggins’ synth-heavy “Danger Zone” Styx’s “Mr. Roboto,” and the aforementioned “In the Air Tonight”. That the band’s immediate follow-ups to their second album are cover albums of 80s music is itself telling, though perhaps still justifiable as side projects on the way to their next major release. Much more undeniable evidence of a permanent style shift, however, was the release of the band’s third act, This City Made Us, in 2026: this album is the direct sequel to Hope Rides Alone and the chronologically latest point in the narrative arc thus far, yet largely retains the musical stylings of Act 2, with perhaps a slight shift towards a more metal-focused sound. What began as a narrative complement has seemingly become the band’s base sound, now and for the foreseeable future.

Nor were the Protomen the only artists attempting to appeal to 80s nostalgia during that time. The 2010s witnessed media, both from other independent or web-based creators and from the mainstream entertainment industry, which deliberately replicated the tropes and aesthetics of 1980s media: 2013’s Kung Fury, an independent film produced via crowdfunding and released online, 2017’s Blade Runner 2049, a sequel to the 1982 cult film which helped define the aesthetic of cyberpunk media, and of course 2016’s Stranger Things, which became one of Netflix’s biggest and longest-lasting hits. In his overview of the 2010s’ preoccupation with 1980s media, Randy Laist discusses multiple potential theories explaining the trend, ranging from ongoing nostalgic cycles (2) to the more specific, deliberate evocation of 80s Americana by the conservative cultural forces which emerged during that decade, embodied by Donald Trump (2-3). However, his suggestion that the 80s were an especially self-obsessed era of media, a decade that presumed its own identity and ‘performed’ itself (5), lends itself best to the logic of homage which operates so strongly in the Protomen’s evocation of the 1980s, especially in the music video: operating through the popular entertainment from that period rather than politics or events. Whatever the primary cause might have been for the trend, the timing of Act 2 placed the Protomen ahead of the curve, enabling them to capitalize on not only their own breakout success but the cresting wave of 80s homage entertainment following the same logics- hence its succession by The Cover Up in 2015, and the music video in 2016.

In light of this larger shift, the Protomen’s decision to embrace nostalgic homage as their primary identity is hardly surprising. As the band currently remains fully independent (via their label Sound Machine Records), it falls fully upon themselves to sustain their own audiences. The band’s live shows, tours and albums have enabled them to profit from what is technically fan labor for a property owned by Capcom; moreover, the band has even produced and performed music in collaboration of the company itself in 2013 (Capcom). Even so, the band has hardly been ‘promoted’ to any sort of official capacity, as other fandom producers have, nor have they entered into any subsequent collaborations since then, making that avenue of compensation suggested by Abigail De Kosnik seemingly untenable for them (110). Moreover, while the group is “big in videogame circles”, it hasn’t always been enough to support them financially (Edidin).

Consequently, the Protomen’s current reliance on cover songs alongside original music which caters to the more established, comparatively broad market of 80s pastiche entertainment is a sensible decision. Still, not only does it, in some regards, trade dependence upon one source material for a larger, more diffused collection within a bygone zeitgeist (much in the same way that Stranger Things based most of its storylines and visuals on overt remixes of 80s genre fare), but it also seems to foreclose on the experimental qualities of the band’s early days which allowed the band to anticipate and benefit from incoming booms like the 80s nostalgia cycle to begin with. When The Father of Death first released, the band’s turn towards pastiche was both itself a clever creative sleight and surprisingly prescient; as the band continues to stay within that mode, they may risk becoming trapped in the past.

 

Works Cited

Bürki, Criss. “Rock Band 4 Announcements - Physical Pre-Orders now available, new songs announced, AND the Rock Band 4 Compatibility Chart!” Harmonix, August 24, 2015. https://www.harmonixmusic.com/blog/rock-band-4-physical-pre-orders-now-available-and-new-songs-announced. 

Capcom, Minish. “Two amazing Mega Man tribute albums coming this fall.” Capcom, September 11, 2013. https://news.capcomusa.com/brelston/blog/2013/09/11/two-amazing-mega-man-tribute-albums-coming-this-fall. 

Clark, Rick. “Nashville Skyline.” Mix, April 1, 2006. https://web.archive.org/web/20120328113302/http://mixonline.com/mag/audio_nashville_skyline_86/. 

De Kosnik, Abigail. “Fandom as Free Labor.” Digital Labor: The Internet as Playground and Factory, edited by Trebor Scholz, Taylor & Francis Group, 2012. 

Edidin, Rachel. “These Guys Made a Rock Opera About Mega Man — And It's Awesome.” Wired, September 12, 2013. https://www.wired.com/2013/09/mega-man-rock-opera-protomen/. 

Laist, Randy. The ’80s Resurrected: Essays on the Decade in Popular Culture Then and Now. McFarland, 2022.

“Light Up The Night - Official Music Video.” Produced by Jim Muscarella. Posted Dec 23, 2016 by the Protomen. YouTube. 16 min., 42 sec.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8pywyGywWg. 

“Light Up the Night.” Produced by the Protomen. Posted Dec 3, 2014 by The Protomen. YouTube. 4 min., 4 sec.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DIL9yteJdE. 

“Light Up the Night.” Produced by the Protomen. Posted July 12, 2010 by Light Up the Night. YouTube. 4 min., 4 sec.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkLvpt9Z3fA. 

Sperb, Jason. Flickers of Film: Nostalgia in the Time of Digital Cinema. Rutgers University Press, 2016. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt18kcvbh. 

The Protomen. Act II: The Father of Death. Sound Machine Records. Released September 8, 2009.

The Protomen. Act III: This City Made Us. Sound Machine Records. Released January 9, 2026;

The Protomen. "Light Up the Night." Act II: The Father of Death, Sound Machine Records, 2009. Spotify app.https://open.spotify.com/track/0b4KsOdnrZlfE5VUAAzxv1. 

The Protomen. Present: A Night of Queen. Sound Machine Records. Released June 1, 2012.

The Protomen. The Cover-Up: Original Soundtrack from the Motion Picture. Sound Machine Records. Released January 23, 2015.

The Protomen. The Protomen. Sound Machine Records. Released September 3, 2005.