Christopher Cross – Ride Like The Wind

Forty-Five Years Later, The Song Finally Gets Its First Real Video

Released in January 1980 as Christopher Cross’s debut single, “Ride Like The Wind” climbed to number two on the Billboard Hot 100 on April 26, spending four consecutive weeks blocked from the top by Blondie’s “Call Me.” The song spent 21 weeks on the chart and finished at number 17 on Billboard’s year-end Hot 100 for 1980. It also reached number 69 in the UK and became a platinum-selling track that helped launch Cross into Grammy history. On June 10, 2025—exactly 45 years after the song dominated radio—Seeker Music released the first official music video, directed by Andrea Calvetti and starring Rainey Qualley, Sadie Scheufler, Syd Kilroy, and Kandia Nzinga. The video channels gritty 1970s carsploitation cinema with an all-female cast tearing through desert highways in vintage muscle cars, reimagining the outlaw-on-the-run narrative with women behind the wheel instead of men. Cross had recorded a basic performance video in 1980, but it never received wide distribution, making this cinematic treatment the song’s first true visual companion.

While “Ride Like The Wind” peaked at number two in America, it became Cross’s breakthrough moment and helped propel his self-titled debut album to number six on the Billboard 200. The album sold over five million copies in the United States alone, with three additional Top 20 hits following the lead single. “Sailing” hit number one on the Hot 100 for one week in August 1980, while “Never Be The Same” reached number 15 and topped the Adult Contemporary chart. The album’s success was unprecedented for a debut release, dominating radio throughout 1980 and establishing Cross as yacht rock’s defining voice. The 2025 music video arrived alongside an expanded reissue of the album, released digitally on May 2 with a deluxe 2LP vinyl edition following in summer. The reissue includes never-before-heard demos, Japan-only tracks, and fan treasures like “Mary Ann,” “Passengers,” and “Smiles of Angels,” all accompanied by new liner notes from acclaimed music journalist Gene Sculatti.

Cross wrote the lyrics under unusual circumstances during a drive from Houston to Austin. He’d been performing the song instrumentally with his band, jamming in the middle of Paul McCartney’s “Nineteen Hundred And Eighty Five” when he developed the signature melody. On a beautiful Texas day while heading to recording sessions, Cross took LSD and wrote the entire lyric about a condemned outlaw racing to the Mexican border. The storyline drew from Cross’s childhood growing up in San Antonio watching cowboy serials like The Lone Ranger, where the bad guy always tried escaping to Mexico. Cross lived near the border and absorbed that anarchistic allure of crossing into Mexico to escape American authority. The lyrics describe a multiple murderer on the run from a hanging sentence who must ride like the wind to reach freedom. Cross dedicated the song to Lowell George of Little Feat, who’d died in 1979, honoring the guitarist’s influence on his musical development.

Recording sessions for the album took place primarily in Austin with producer Michael Omartian, who noticed Cross’s band—Tommy Taylor on drums, Andy Salman on bass, and Rob Meurer on synthesizers—struggled initially to adapt to studio work after years playing live gigs. Someone recommended Taylor play a four-on-the-floor beat with the kick drum hitting every beat, which Omartian said made the thing hop from the beginning. After two to three days of tracking, they captured a satisfactory take. Cross originally wanted a session guitarist for the solo, but Omartian insisted Cross play it himself, recognizing his technical abilities. For the intro, Cross and engineer Chet Himes added wind sound effects, carefully balancing the volume so the effect enhanced rather than overwhelmed the music. Omartian overdubbed acoustic piano and Fender Rhodes electric piano, then brought in Lenny Castro on congas and Victor Feldman on additional percussion. A 28-piece string section led by violinist Assa Dror was recorded, giving the track its lush yacht rock sheen. The most crucial addition came when Michael McDonald contributed soaring backing vocals that became one of the song’s most recognizable elements.

The Christopher Cross album, released December 27, 1979, became one of popular music’s most decorated debuts. At the 23rd Annual Grammy Awards in 1981, Cross became the first artist in Grammy history to win all four general field awards in a single ceremony—Record of the Year for “Sailing,” Album of the Year for Christopher Cross, Song of the Year for “Sailing,” and Best New Artist. This feat wasn’t replicated for 39 years until Billie Eilish swept the same four categories in 2020. The album was nominated for six Grammys total and won five. Cross followed the debut with “Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do)” in 1981, co-written with Burt Bacharach, Carole Bayer Sager, and Peter Allen for the film Arthur. The song spent three weeks at number one on the Hot 100 and won the Oscar for Best Original Song, cementing Cross’s status as one of the era’s most successful singer-songwriters. His follow-up album Another Page yielded the hit “Think of Laura,” which became embedded in pop culture through its use on the soap opera General Hospital.

The 2025 music video marks a bold reimagining of the song’s narrative 45 years after its release. Director Andrea Calvetti explained her vision focused on unleashing wild 1970s energy through muscle cars tearing through the desert, but with a crucial twist—an all-female cast driving their own wild ride rather than serving as passengers in someone else’s story. The video channels the aesthetic of carsploitation classics like Vanishing Point, Zabriskie Point, and Two-Lane Blacktop, films that used desert highways as metaphors for rebellion and escape. Cross has expressed appreciation for the contemporary treatment, noting it brings fresh energy to a song that defined his career. The video premiered on June 10, 2025, with Cross simultaneously embarking on a North American tour with Toto and Men at Work. The tour follows his 2024 performances with Toto at the Hollywood Bowl and their 2025 Dogz of Oz tour across the UK and Europe, proving Cross’s enduring appeal across generations of fans.

In 1981, Canadian sketch comedy SCTV performed a legendary sketch where Rick Moranis portrayed Michael McDonald racing to the studio to record backing vocals for “Ride Like The Wind.” McDonald later reflected he initially thought he was hallucinating when he saw someone who looked exactly like him performing the bit. Italian dance group East Side Beat covered the song in 1991 with five different mixes typical of early 1990s dance music. Belgian DJ Laurent Wéry released a version featuring vocals by Joss Mendosah in 2013 that peaked at number 26 in Belgium. The song appeared in films including Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues and was played in its entirety during an episode of Netflix’s Mindhunter. Cross’s soft-rock classic about an outlaw’s desperate flight to freedom remains one of yacht rock’s defining tracks, a song that balanced precise instrumentation with raw emotional storytelling. As director Andrea Calvetti noted about the 2025 video, the goal was simple—have fun, lean into the pulse of the track, and capture that restless spirit of chasing something just out of reach.