| Lucas with the Lid Off | |
| Cover: | Lucas With The Lid_Off - single cover.jpg |
| Type: | single |
| Artist: | Lucas |
| Album: | Lucacentric |
| Released: | 1994 |
| Length: | 4:02[1] |
| Label: | Big Beat |
| Producer: |
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| Prev Title: | Wau Wau Wau |
| Prev Year: | 1994 |
"Lucas with the Lid Off" is a song by Danish rapper Lucas Secon that was released as the lead single from his second album, Lucacentric (1994). It features a sample from the 1935 Benny Goodman song "When Buddha Smiles".[2] The song was a hit in the United States, reaching number 29 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 22 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart. It was most successful in Australia, where it reached number 15, and it peaked within the top 40 in Canada, Iceland, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.
The music video for the song was directed by the French film maker Michel Gondry and was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Music Video at the 37th Annual Grammy Awards.[3] [4]
The black and white music video for the song is known for its technical achievement in that it was shot in one long continuous single take with no edits, cuts or digital enhancement. In an RES magazine interview, Gondry described the video as "a big turn for me, because it was so challenging. Nobody really believed - even me - that we could pull that off when we made it after 17 takes, because it was really done all in-camera in one shot. There is no post-production at all. I think this one really gave me a lot of attention.'"[5]
Lucas with the Lid Off was nominated in the Best Music Video (short form) category at the 37th Grammy Awards,[4] Produced by Michel Gondry whom had two music videos nominated at the 37th Grammy Awards.[6]
The video was also received a MTV Video Music Award nomination for Best Male Video at the 1995 MTV Video Music Awards, and was No. 20 in Slant Magazines 100 Greatest Music Videos.[7]
On the album A Century of Song (Polyholiday Records), the song was covered by the American band La Musique Populaire.[9] It was performed in the form of a spoof in an episode of the PBS series Bill Nye the Science Guy in 1995, but renamed "Whether the Weather" as part of the episode's scientific lesson about climates.