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How Video Made The Radio Star

Snoop Dogg

On August 1st 1981 MTV launched for the first time in the United States to the tune of “Video Killed The Radio Star” by The Buggles, the very first video to air on the station. The debut track acted almost like a statement of intent; music from here on in would now be a thoroughly visual experience, as well as a sonic one. If making music videos was an off-the-cuff luxury indulged in by slightly maverick label bosses, MTV would make it a necessity for any musicians dreaming of reaching millions.

If the Buggles had written their hit a few years into MTV’s lifetime they might of described radio as making the radio star, not killing it. Artists like Madonna, Prince and other new eighties extroverts that arrived in the wake of the channel found the video format a suitable bedfellow for their visually enticing power projects. Their type of music which relied on shock, awe and splendour was perfectly suited to the new medium of music videos. Pop’s insistence on eccentricity, charisma and presence has arguably not left us since.

Initially it was British acts that would take full advantage of this new stage, not American ones, with UK artists making up over half of the stations output right up until the late 1980s. Rimmer writes in his book Like Punk Never Happened: Culture Club and the New Pop: “British groups naturally understood how to exploit the video medium long before the average, dull-looking, American rock band. Adam Ant, Eurythmics. Billy Idol, Madness, Police and even Def Leppard… all used MTV for a leg up the charts. Duran Duran’s ‘Hungry Like The Wolf’ was a favourite on MTV fully three months before it began to be played on the radio. The radio stations, to their surprise, were getting requests for things they weren’t even playing. The world had turned upside down.”

The gargantuan profitability of this new medium will come as a shock to anyone keeping one eye on the music industry developments of today. Innovations and new technologies in 2014 are more likely than not going to end up producing frowns on the faces of record executives. But with MTV the deal was a sweet one for all parties concerned. The record labels produced and financed the music videos for play on the airwaves, essentially giving MTV (a television channel) free wall-to-wall programming. Young people would tune in by the millions to hear and watch their pop heroes, and in between MTV could sell them the goodies that would provide the lucrative advertising revenue that kept the wheels turning. Musicians and their behind-the-scenes counterparts made a fortune from the exposure and MTV made a shit load of cold, hard cash in the process.

The elephant in the room however, was the overwhelming rockiness of the stuff played. Not the mention that fact that almost all African-American music was shunned. The rule at the start – it seemed – was that if it wasn’t white and holding a guitar then they weren’t interested. In the beginning there proved to be very few exceptions. Enter Michael Jackson.

The young Michael Jackson had already known superstardom as the frontman (or frontboy) in the quintet Jackson 5. Girls had been chasing him and screaming his name since he was young but in 1983 he had yet to solidify his place as the undisputed King of Pop. ‘Billie Jean’ would change everything, breaking down the racial barrier and becoming the first “black” music video played in heavy rotation when the rest of MTV was still persistently and monotonously white. ‘Thriller’ would change everything again. From the perfectly choreographed dance moves to it’s Hollywood-style size and scope, the 14 minute video single-handedly wiped the floor with every other offering that we’d ever seen and put the art of music video-making up there with the music-making itself as part of a core set of pop star skills. Part musical, part horror film, part full-blown pop extravaganza…the rise of Michael Jackson kept video directors and label bosses firmly on their toes.

As the middle of the eighties approached MTV branched out into awarding its own accolades, aiming to offer a more fun and less bloated version of the Grammys to the music consuming masses who – usually – weren’t too fussed about who had just recently made a ‘seminal’ and ‘outstanding’ contribution to pop music history and just wanted to hear great records sung by their favourite and sometimes less-than-outstanding pop stars. In the eyes of MTV, pop was taking itself too seriously and something had to change. Cue ZZ Top, Tina Turner, Rod Stewart and an iconic performance from Madonna in full wedding attire singing “Like A Virigin”. Right from the word go the team behind the show wanted to put the night at the forefront of pop’s calendar. Here would be a proper knees-up, party-style event to match the fun and splendour of music’s greatest. Not to mention the obligatory celebrity sparkle thrown in for good measure.

If the inclusion of Michael Jackson in it’s coverage was recognition that not just white rock fans were watching, the start of Heavy Metal Mania in 1985 (later built on and expanded to become Headbanger’s Ball) was the channel’s effort to take notice of a different kind of white, rock consumer. After all, not all young white kids listened to the same type of drum-thumping, guitar-banging tunes, right? Heavy rock, ‘hair rock’ and metal now had a segment to call it’s own and it would be the first of many genre-based shows to air on the channel. The alternative rock show 120 Minutes was next. Still mostly white and still primarily rock, the feature aimed to capitalise on the distaste for stadium rock acts and guitar solos delivered by pouffy-haired, leather jacket-wearing Neanderthals who didn’t seem to have an “alternative” bone in their body.

In much of the States and in places like the UK and Australia, a revolution was happening in music. Started and then spurred on by punk’s anti-establishment dogmas and do-it-yourself ideals, bands were more than ever before deciding to shun the office of the seasoned record executive in favour of the home-made recording studio, the friend’s flat and the dingy venue. High production values and a casual love of pop’s past were things that were taken for granted in popular music beforehand, 120 Minutes was there to chronicle the adventures (and misadventures) of bands and artists that didn’t follow those oldest of pop formulas. Kate Bush, The Smiths, XTC, The Ramones, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, The Smashing Pumpkins and other slightly left-field artists that defied easy categorisation all saw heavy coverage on the program, and the show would go on to become one of MTV’s most popular and lucrative additions.

But it wasn’t until 1988 with Yo! MTV Raps that the station finally opened it’s eyes to Hip Hop, a movement that had been bubbling away for more than a decade and which had it’s genesis in the traditions of African-American music, a huge and neglected part of the musical universe for MTV. The supposed “Golden Age” of Hip hop had already begun and MTV wasted no time in jumping on the already crowded bandwagon to get excited about this new sound. The decision to exclude Hip hop from it’s coverage up until this point proved to be throbbing and painful mistake however. The nation had apparently been waiting for this for some time: the show became an instant success and was only outperformed in ratings by the Video Music Awards and the channel’s coverage of Live Aid. Eric B. & Rakim’s video for ‘Follow the Leader’ was the first video to air and unintentionally set the aesthetic standard for the segment, showing a Hip hop world that was confrontational, hardman (and as the video shows) packed full of gangsters (or ‘gangstas’). 20 years on from the program’s debut, MTV were able to take credit for showing rap to the world and (rightly) claiming success in making rap a colossal part of western popular culture.

Snoop Doggy Dogg, Salt N’ Pepa, Tupac and Biggie were all artists whose careers benefited from MTV’s soft patronage. As Hip hop started to consolidate it’s healthier share of the channel’s exports you would’ve been forgiven for thinking that the genre was on a steady incline upwards and upwards. Enter Nirvana, the Grunge revolution and the swift 180 degree turn back to white, suburban rock that kicked those prospects in the family jewels. Mainstream friendly rappers like MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice got their big break from the channel and gangsta rap and West Coast rappers maintained coverage that might’ve been thought impossible a few years previously, but the genre never quite managed to unseat white mainstream rock as the prime genre of choice for MTV. Then in 1995 Yo! MTV Raps was downgraded to just Yo!, a significantly stripped down version, a perfect metaphor for how “alternative” sounds had supplanted rap at the one time things could’ve been different.

The tragedy of Hip Hop on MTV shouldn’t been as such a sad moment, as the rest of the music spectrum would soon hit sad times too. From 1995 to 2000, MTV played 36.5% fewer music videos and as MTV president Van Toeffler has explained, “the novelty of just showing music videos [had] worn off. It’s required us to reinvent ourselves to a contemporary audience.” Shows like The Real World forecast a world where Reality TV ruled supreme, and if watching nobodies talk about their lives on camera wasn’t your tipple, new programmes like Beavis and Butt-head reinvigorated the channel by proving it still had it’s eyes to the funny-bones of America’s youth. Even if that was at the continuing expense of it’s music coverage.

Founder of Island Records, Chris Blackwell, has said he doesn’t “think there are any record companies now in the real sense of the word. We’re all in the fashion business. You used to be able to sell records purely on music and musicianship. Now it’s packaging, media, television, and video”. I think he’s right. Be in no doubt though. The old adage that “Video Killed The Radio Star” is a false one. It changed music forever by thrusting the need for spectacle and blockbuster-style visuals up everyone’s list of priorities, but it has liberated those artists and creators whose creativity, genius and vision were previously restricted by a set of speakers alone. When they first became industry norm it increased record sales and record industry revenue too.

It is easy to say in the 21st Century – with the internet and cheap software – that making a music video is no big deal (or much hard work). But even when music videos were an expensive and laborious task, the inclusion of them into our musical universe has – I believe – been a blessing rather than a curse to listeners and creators alike. More content, more pageantry and more avenues for creative expression and great storytelling. At their best they are illustrations of our greatest moments, and at their most awful they are no worse than a shitty second-rate sitcom, only far far shorter. Video made the radio star, not killed it.

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