MTV was a cable channel ahead of its time. It promoted music videos ... a foreign concept for the most part. Sure, there were shows like American Bandstand and Solid Gold, but they pretty much promoted a "band" playing a song "live." Other bands did music "videos" to promote their albums in the past, and these may have been sown on music shows, but to have a 24-hour music channel that showed nothing but videos? Could this even work?
Well, it did, and boy did it ever! Videos spewed from this channel like crazy - from the first video, which was ironically called "Video Killed the Radio Star," to "Hot For Teacher," the appetite of the people could not be satisfied. The music video genre jumped to another level with Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video - it was more of a short movie. Music videos became more artistic, more professional, and had more of a storytelling aspect to them.
Sadly, sometime in the 1990's, MTV began abandoning music videos, and now unfortunately, one can really only find music videos on MTV early in the morning (like 5:30 AM). It's a good thing there are so many other music video channels out there representing many, many genres - so it's not a total loss, I guess.
5 comments:
I remember when they used to play music on MTV. I loved the unplugged shows that were done on MTV.
So many music videos can be found on YouTube now. MTV can go suck it.
I really really loved Mtv when I was younger. I can't tell you how many times I stayed the night at my friend's house and we stayed up watching Mtv and Puttin' on the Hits. (Do you even remember that show? That was an 80's classic!)
--snow
I remember one of the underground music video shows called "AMP" - they showed more electronic music, dj mixes, Drum n'Bass, and Industrial. Really cool stuff.
Oh, and Head Banger's Ball!!!
VH-1 Classic, dude.
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