“Be in My Video” is a scathing riff on the dominance of MTV in the 1980s. Zappa was never particularly big on music videos, and when he did shoot one for MTV – “You Are What You Is” – it was banned from the network before it could air.

The song directs particular ire at English musician David Bowie (ironically a longtime fan of Zappa), who was reaching new levels of commercial and public prominence at the time off the heels of his 1983 blockbuster Let’s Dance. According to King Crimson vocalist Adrian Belew, who previously worked with both musicians, Zappa developed a grudge against Bowie in 1978, when Bowie “poached” him for the supporting tour for “Heroes”. Belew states that he, Bowie, and Brian Eno ran into Zappa shortly after the “poaching,” at which point Zappa responded to every one of Bowie’s attempts at striking up a conversation with “fuck you, Captain Tom.”

Bowie, for his part, stated afterwards that the encounter went better than he expected; he remained a follower of Zappa’s work and later had Rykodisc handle the 1990-1992 remasters of his backlog because of Zappa’s good relationship with the label.