FEATURE:
Video Made the Radio Star?
IMAGE CREDIT: Crush Creative
Highs and Lows: The Iconic MTV at Thirty-Eight
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MAYBE it is arbitrary…
marking a thirty-eighth anniversary but, as MTV celebrates that birthday this week, I wanted to pay tribute. The station was born a couple of years before I was and, on its launch on Saturday, 1st August, 1981, the immortal phrase, “Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll”, was announced; the first music video played on MTV was Video Killed the Radio Star by The Bugles. Since the very beginning, MTV was designed as a platform for music videos. I love the irony/humour of The Bugles kicking off MTV – a sort of message to say that the video would kill artists popular on radio. Rather than replace radio, MTV provided people with a new side to music; a more visual and cinematic approach that was quite new. Top of the Pops already existed but that was limited in terms of genre and artists. You didn’t get videos (for the most part) on Top of the Pops: MTV was a station that sort of had a bit of mixed fortune at the start. When I first encountered it in the late-1980s/early-1990s, I was staggered by all the brilliant videos. I was listening to music via radio and on a Walkman/Discman but MTV was this revelation; a station that opened eyes to amazing videos, new artists and, unlike a lot of radio stations, the sheer variety of sounds on offer was amazing – there were also interviews and features; a one-stop-shop for all eager music lovers.
Up until 1981, there was an enormous capacity for music videos. Sure, Top of the Pops played some but there wasn’t really an outlet where artist could see their latest video highlighted and enjoyed around the world. When videos were made, they got occasional T.V. time but radio was very much the medium for exposure. Perhaps there was a fear that music T.V. would destroy radio and artists would not be included in the world unless they made these big and commercial videos. Ironically, radio has not wavered and decline since then: one can debate the music video peaked in the 1980s and 1990s and now, at a time when we have sites like YouTube, videos hold less stock and fascination – as we mainly view them through laptops and phones and there is not the same sense of originality and spectacle. Before I get to the explosion of MTV, here is an article that talks about the station’s early success:
“The concept of playing videos 24/7 was a new one, unfortunately, the technology was not quite there yet and you would often see periods of complete black on the screen as an employee would have to physically switch tapes into a new machine called a VCR which I wrote all about in this blog.
There were also a lot of repeats because in those early days there were only a few hundred music videos that they had in their system. They would also have to put in stock NASA footage at twenty past the hour for what was called “local avail”. This local avail was the time period where local cable companies could sell advertising. The problem was no one wanted to buy advertising, so they were stuck having to fill this empty time slot. A lot of people would think these were actual videos…
IMAGE CREDIT: Crush Creative
The thing was even though MTV was only playing in certain markets, and not attracting a lot of advertisers, it was a success right out of the gate. Local record stores that were in locations where MTV was playing were starting to sell more records for songs that weren’t being played on the radio. Some of these early unknown bands included Men At Work, The Human League, and Bow Wow Wow. No, I hadn’t heard of them either.
Everyone knew what a DJ was but what the hell was a VJ? MTV wanted to go with more album-oriented rock at first featuring more well known and established bands. The problem was they found out their audience was younger than they thought so they moved into more top 40 based music. Another problem was a lot of the music in the top 40 was by unknown new singers and bands. There was also new styles of music people really didn’t know including “New Wave” and more electronic dance-based music.
This leads them to use younger presenters to introduce these new videos and artists and the term “video jockey” or “VJ” was coined.
Some of the first VJs at MTV were:
Mark Goodman
Nina Blackwood
Alan Hunter
J. J. Jackson
Martha Quinn (not the medicine woman..)
The VJs would start to become celebrities in their own right and sometimes MTV would use “guest VJs” such as Adam Ant, Billy Idol, Phil Collins, and Simon LeBon. Arguably one of the most famous VJs of all time would be “Downtown Julie Brown” who was the host of the Club MTV show from 1987 until 1992. Her full name is Julie Dorne Brown and had been a dancer on Top of the Pops. The show she hosted was one of the first that exclusively played dance music”.
I forgot to mention the video jockeys but that was another news aspect to popular culture: the visual side of radio, if you will. The notion of introducing videos and having this very visual and, as I said early, cinematic quality was a breakthrough. We could witness music in a fresh way and it meant those who were not fans of radio could see all their favourites hits. MTV did strengthen and diversify before long but racial exclusivity and a slight lack of genre expanse was a problem in the first few years. The earliest videos were from white artists largely and there was not a place for black artists. One can debate whether that was a conscious decision by MTV bosses or the feeling mainstream radio in the early-1980s was lacking black artists. Whilst many do not speak of Michael Jackson in positive terms today, one cannot ignore his contribution and importance regarding MTV’s survival and popularity – and the way he helped bring black artists to the station. The Root explain more in this feature that, whilst Jackson helped bring more black artists to MTV, maybe some of the harder-edged black artists from Hip-Hop and Rap were not featured heavily:
"MTV's playlist was 99 percent white until Michael Jackson forced his way on the air by making the best music videos anyone had ever seen," Rob Tannenbaum, co-author of I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution, told The Root. "Compared to Michael, MTV staples like REO Speedwagon and Journey suddenly looked even more boring. And when Michael's videos created higher ratings for MTV, network executives claimed they'd 'learned a lesson' and tentatively embraced the softer side of black pop music, especially Lionel Richie."
"Now they say they played 'Billie Jean' because they loved it. How plausible is it that they 'loved it'? Their playlist had no black artists on it," Yetnikoff scoffs in the book. "And at the time, Michael Jackson was black. So what is this bullsh-t that they loved it?"
The threats from Jackson's studio exec paid off, both for Jackson and his black contemporaries. "Yetnikoff fought for Michael and this music video to be played on MTV, and once the video was in rotation everyone understood why," said DJ Dave Paul, who is bringing his San Francisco-based club night, "The Prince and Michael Experience," to Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and even the tony towns of Martha's Vineyard, Mass., and Cape Cod, Mass., over the next few months. "It would have probably taken another two to three years, in my opinion, for MTV to [fully] integrate black artists without the success of 'Billie Jean.' "
It's important to note that MTV's embrace of "Billie Jean" wasn't just a cultural breakthrough. The music channel might not exist today had it not changed its tune on black music.
"It's not enough to say the Thriller videos forced MTV to integrate," Tannenbaum insisted. "Michael Jackson helped save the network from being shut down. MTV executives had expected to lose $10 million before they showed a profit. The network quickly lost $50 million, and its parent company was prepared to shut down MTV and call it quits. Jackson's three Thriller videos came out in 1983. In the first three months of 1984, MTV had their first quarterly profit. Ironically, MTV was rescued from failure by a musician who didn't fit the channel's original 'rock 'n' roll-only' format."
Since Jackson's magical steps lit up 30 years ago, black music videos have grown to the point where a few generalizations to describe them would never suffice to really capture it all. There have been significant strides in filmmaking quality due to technological advances and a wider palette of thought when it comes to conceptualizing what a video can be”.
MTV’s style was about quick cuts and stylised lightning. Not only did this bring more music video directors to Hollywood but it translated into filmmaking and some of the big film releases. We look at MTV as a platform for music videos, but it was much larger than that. MTV was practically a new language and an obsession for many. It gave a new lease and imagination to music and, once the station overcame its early issues regarding race and variety, it exploded. My early memories of MTV revolve around these incredibly imaginative videos. I recall seeing Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer for the first time on MTV and the beguiling stop-motion/Claymation affects that were so evolved then – it still seems ahead of its time now. Madonna was an early star and videos for tracks like Material Girl and Vogue were hugely popular and talked-about. I shall conclude soon enough but, when seeing MTV as much more than a way to see videos from across the music spectrum, The National explored its wider realm:
“It was influential - enormously so - and MTV became a channel devoted to selling a lifestyle as much as anything else. "The job changed," the legendary producer Rick Rubin said of making music in the era of MTV. "It became a job of controlling your image."
As Marks and Tannenbaum scrupulously describe, artists with any hesitation about their looks, or about the power of the music video to sculpt careers, were left behind, replaced by a new, MTV-savvy fleet of superstars. MTV was little more than a disaster for major performers such as Bob Seger who were uncomfortable with their looks; like the advent of sound in film had spelled the end for actors with poor speaking voices, the arrival of MTV often meant an untimely conclusion to the careers of those musicians with faces made for radio.
In their place came artists such as Madonna, U2, and Guns N' Roses, who understood the power of video to burnish reputations, to create mythologies, and to reach enormous audiences with unparalleled ease. Music videos became the arena where larger-than-life performers exchanged one persona for another, treating stardom as a series of masks to be donned and abandoned at will. The channel would soon expand worldwide, opening numerous outposts in Europe and Asia, and eventually launching MTV Middle East (formerly known as MTV Arabia) in 2007”.
Articles such as this chart MTV’s highs and lows but I think the station was always going to struggle to survive when people caught on; when other stations broadcast music videos and, crucially, when the Internet took over. As mentioned, YouTube is the biggest platform for music videos and that means we do not rely on TV as much. It is a real shame we do not talk about MTV in the same way as we used to because, at its peak, it was truly remarkable. I loved the fact I could find this station that showed amazing videos and music content. I found so many new artists and songs from watching MTV and I know for a fact so many popular artists upped their game in terms of videos so they could get featured on MTV – the same can be said of the most innovative directors. Returning to the article from The National and they highlighted the change from video broadcasts to a new style of programming on MTV that was more about reality shows – this continues to this very day:
“The second, and more significant, is MTV's eventual abandonment of the music video. The groundwork for this move had been laid decades before, when market research indicated that a half-hour of scheduled programming - any programming - would regularly beat 30 minutes of videos in the ratings.
MTV began slowly, rolling out game shows such as Remote Control and fashion programmes such as House of Style that offered at least a tenuous musical link. But with the introduction of The Real World in 1992, the sluice gates opened, and the tidal wave of reality was loosed - not only on MTV, which would soon introduce the likes of Singled Out, Road Rules, and yes, Jersey Shore, but across television as a whole.
IN THIS PHOTO: Director Michel Gondry helped push MTV to new audiences with his groundbreaking videos of the 1990s/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images
"That's really when MTV ended," says Duran Duran's Nick Rhodes of The Real World. With the buzz generated by its reality programming, MTV realised it had outgrown videos, and slowly began to jettison them from its schedule. Journalists penned obituaries for the video, and it was widely assumed that once MTV was no longer interested in playing them, neither would anyone else. They were completely wrong. The music video, left for dead after MTV abandoned it in the late 1990s, reinvented itself in smaller, fitter, fleeter fashion for its new patron - the internet”.
Every great innovation, format and revolution goes through its ups and downs and, sadly, had to compete with modern changes and progression. Many are remembering MTV at thirty-eight and were they were when they first saw it; the video that captured them and, for people like me, how long it took to come into our lives. One can argue the birth and popularity of MTV changed the relationship between artist and consumer; maybe there was less need to see them perform live as we could watch the videos but, to me, MTV helped boost so many artists; it brought girl and boy bands to the fore and gave the world some of the best music videos of the day. MTV gave us a lot of gold…and I especially love the Unplugged series.
MTV was a lifeline and essential fix for children back in my day. We could see a big artist in a new light and that simple visual aspect was essential: not just hearing someone from the radio but getting to see their videos, concerts and interviews. It heralded the modern=-day alternative, YouTube, but there is much more to MTV’s thirty-eighth anniversary than mere nostalgia. I want to end by sourcing from a 2008 article that seem to distil the essence of MTV and what it meant:
“Now watched by more than 340 million viewers in 139 countries (among them, Russia, China, and Vietnam), MTV has been credited with creating icons (Michael Jackson and Madonna leading a long and glittering list), influencing fashion, spawning movies and television shows (Flashdance, Miami Vice), saving the music industry, even ending the Cold War. Not to mention, according to its critics, leading several young generations to perdition.
MTV has shaped so much for so long, it is hard to recall a time when there wasn’t a blocky, graffiti-sprayed M (the channel’s break-all-the-design-rules logo is counted one of the most instantly identifiable on the planet) peering into the living room. But there was. Eons ago, when Ronald Reagan was in the first months of his presidency and Bill Gates had yet to make his first billion and cable television was boasting an unheard-of two dozen choices, there was no such thing as a 24-hour music channel…”
MTV will have its detractors and those who say its shone briefly and had more issues than triumphs. Others will use MTV as an example of a station that tried to control our tastes and was more about what was cool than what was good; maybe concerned with fashion and branding – there are those who have negative opinions and are glad the station is no longer a huge player. To many of us who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, it was a fountain of conversation and, as I shall repeat, opened eyes to new songs and the power of the music video. Seeing our favourite artists on the screen was a huge delight and many of my treasured young memories stem from seeing videos for the first time on MTV. I can still recall the day I saw Soundgarden’s Black Hole Sun (from 1994’s Superunknown) and having my eyes opened to this weird and unique video; seeing Madonna and Michael Jackson create these ambitious and stylish videos in their prime; the cool adverts and those iconic logos – all of it sticks with me still. I think it is sad we no longer have music T.V. and, when we think of MTV and Top of the Pops, many want a return – there is something missing from the current climate. The Bugles sung about video killing the radio star but, actually, radio flourished (and still does): MTV was this great phenomenon and station that, whilst it only shone for a short time, we still talk about today. Thirty-eight years after it launched, I am remembering MTV and those stunning music videos. I have my top-ten list (of videos I saw on the station) but…
WHICH do you rank as the very best?