Labor Day ended in 1998, when Helmut Lang decided to show in New York.
The music video to Don Henley's "The Boys of Summer" is a French New Wave-influenced piece directed by Jean-Baptiste Mondino. Shot completely in black-and-white, it shows the 'main character' of the song at three different stages of life (as a young boy, a young adult and middle-aged), in each case reminiscing about the past relationship. This is shown during the line "A little voice inside my head said don't look back, you can never look back" at which point, each of the three people look back in turn. The young boy in the video (played by seven year old Josh Paul) resembles Don Henley to the extent that he also is a left-handed drummer. The cutaways of the "boys" jumping in the air appears to have been influenced by Leni Riefenstahl's 1938 film Olympia.
Driven by synthesizers and drum machines, the song has a haunting rhythm and feel throughout the intro, bridge, and verses, but a 'summer-ey' hook and guitar tones. It is widely speculated that the song is about the passing of youth and entering middle age, with the obvious theme of 'summer love' apparent in the choruses, and of reminiscence of a past relationship. The line, "My love for you will still be strong, after the boys of summer have gone" can be construed as a realization that relationships are often destroyed by one's own restless youth, even though there is a conflicting internal desire for that love to flourish.[
