On August 1, 1981, Music Television launched, completely revolutionizing the music world. MTV brought the format of the music video to the forefront of the record industry, thus ending the connection audiences used to find with the artist through an album cover. Now you could watch a stylized performance of the group right there on cable. It changed the whole game.
Of course the relationship between moving pictures and music was nothing that MTV created. As I said last time, Elvis having the first memorable album cover wasn’t the only thing he did for music and images. Between September 1956 and January 1957, Elvis appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show three times. Sullivan had the biggest family entertainment show on television and he had said that Elvis was “unfit for family viewing.” This was of course because of Elvis’ hip movements while he sang. This led to the historic final performance on Sullivan’s show in which Elvis was only shown from the waist up to prevent families from having to see these oh so perverse movements from The King:
Elvis also started appearing in movies, and that set the stage for The Beatles to become the biggest band in the history of music during the ‘60s. The Beatles also had a famous Ed Sullivan performance, and they had the movies Help! and A Hard Day’s Night. Even Kiss had a movie in the late ‘70s that may be the single worst movie ever made. It was titled Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park and was supposed to make the band look like superheroes. It was a total disaster and featured some of the worst acting and special effects in the history of movies. You don’t believe me? Check it out.
I digress. Bands had appeared on television shows, some even made promo videos that essentially count as music videos, like the Rolling Stones with “Jumping Jack Flash,” but it was not until MTV that the medium really picked up steam. It is common knowledge (isn’t it?) that the first video on MTV was “Video Killed the Radio Star” by The Buggles. True in a sense, but more than that video killed the album cover. A new format was going to take music by storm and soon you would remember artists more by their videos than their album covers. Let us take a brief look at some ‘80s artists more memorable for videos than an album cover.
Van Halen: Actually a bit of an exception here since the cover for 1984 with the smoking baby is pretty memorable, but you’re more likely to remember the video for “Hot for Teacher” with the blonde bombshell teacher dancing around and lead singer David Lee Roth being his usual comedic self.
Duran Duran: Have no idea what album “Rio” is even on, and I pride myself on being a fountain of useless music knowledge, but I know this video just because of those shots of the band on the boat in the suits that have become the defining images of the group and all the cool ‘80s special effects and bright colors.
Whitesnake: The ultimate example of knowing a video more than anything else the band has done. Do you even know the name of the album “Here I Go Again” is on? Doesn’t matter. You do know the image of Tawny Kitaen dancing all over the hood of that car in that white lingerie and griding on David Coverdale while he drives. Everybody knows this song and this video and they are lying if they don’t. At least every guy would remember it.
There were two artists who used the video component in the ‘80s and ‘90s to build up a legacy and cement their place as the two biggest stars of that generation: Michael Jackson and Madonna. Madonna’s first notable performance came on the MTV Video Music Awards when she played “Like a Virgin” while humping the ground and rolling around in a wedding dress, about a million more times sexually explicit than Elvis Presley swinging his legs around a little bit while playing guitar. In 1989 she released her video for “Like a Prayer,” which prompted a great deal of outrage from Catholic groups due to the sexual and religious imagery. In the early ‘90s Madonna was criticized again for her “Justify My Love” video which included sadomasochism and a narrative which can best be described as Madonna is sad and goes to a hotel, has sex, and leaves happy. Madonna used the music video medium to push the boundaries on what was taboo and made the representation of sex in music a huge debate.
Michael Jackson used videos in a much different way. Jackos’ videos were a spectacle, oftentimes short films. “Thriller” is obviously the most famous of all of his videos. It a mini-epic horror flick that completely revolutionized the relationship between songs and videos. The song and video combined to tell a story, and that is what set the stage for people like Madonna to use the video format to get a point across. People still reference the dancing in the “Thriller” video and Jackson’s bright red leather jacket. Even for the tour Jackson had planned on doing before he died, shirts were modeled after his zombie-style look in the video.
Into the ‘90s Jackson had notable video productions, including “Black or White” with the then-uber-popular Macaulay Culkin. Jacko came under fire for the video though because the end sequence features him going insane dancing, grabbing his crotch, and smashing cars with racial slurs like “No More Wetbacks” and other offensive phrases. Jacko even sees a shop window that says “KKK Rules” and throws the steering wheel from the car through it. Here is the uncensored, original version of the video complete with the wild ending sequence. Embedding is disabled so you'll have to follow that link.
Michael Jackson knew what the music video was all about. It was a fun little tool to entertain people and get your music known, similar to the album cover. I will always remember being about 6 years old, watching MTV with my brother, and seeing Rob Zombie for the first time. Like the album cover, the video was supposed to give you the defining image for a song, an album, or even an artist and with “Dragula” Zombie did just that. You needed to see Zombie as this terrifying dude who loves the dead and horror stuff. This little video got that point across perfectly. I will never forget seeing this video and having my mind totally blown:
Nobody does that sort of thing anymore. With the 2000s came a change in the relationship between music and images. Nobody really watches videos anymore since like with album covers, people just download a track, throw it on a device, throw it in their pocket, and they are done. People simply don’t take the time to watch videos, and really nobody shows videos anymore. MTV only shows reality television like 16 and Pregnant, and their partner VH1 has followed suit and now focuses on reality programming. British singer Robbie Williams made an album titled Reality Killed the Video Star in reference to this trend. Some people still put the effort in to making a video though. Lady Gaga always tries to make a big production out of her videos like Michael Jackson and Madonna, but it doesn’t have the same effect since the video medium isn’t what it was.
OK Go always makes neat videos too, like the one with the treadmills. I only know that song is called “Here It Goes Again” because I knew the video with the band members dancing on treadmills, and the 13 million views it has on Youtube speaks volumes about the simple fact if you make a cool video people will love it and take the time to watch it.
Taylor Swift’s “You Belong with Me” is another famous video made recently. It shows her playing two parts and telling a little story to go along with the song, something Michael Jackson used to do.
But now, only a few years later, music videos don’t seem to matter as much. Just like the album cover, the video was a tool used to cement an image of what the band was all about. Now with things like Twitter you can talk right to an artist; you don’t need to wait for a video to come out to see what they are all about you can hear right from them. And since MTV has spent years manufacturing culture and making things popular, they have decided to make reality television the big craze rather than music. Adele had a smash album with 21, but do you even know of any music videos from it? I could tell you about all of the singles, but I have never seen a video for an Adele song. Do they even exist?
Music seemed like a perfect fit for pictures and videos, but now that doesn’t seem to be the case. People seem to want to do a million things at once, hence smart phones allowing you to make a call and cruise the internet at the same time now. People don’t want to take the time to watch videos, and nobody buys albums anymore so the album cover and music video are effectively done. Now people can communicate with bands directly so they don’t need a clever PR tool like cool album art or an interesting video. Why bother taking the time to buy a record and look at the art or watch a video when you can send a tweet to Lady Gaga and have her answer you. That is much more personal and easier than spending money or taking a few minutes to watch something.
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Sources:
1. "MTV Launches." History.com. A&E Television Networks. Web. 07 May 2012. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/mtv-launches.
2. Marcus, Greil. "Elvis Presley: The Ed Sullivan Shows." Mitch Schneider Organization. Web. 07 May 2012. http://www.msopr.com/n/past-campaigns/elvis-presley-the-ed-sullivan-shows/.
3. "Madonna Biography, Discography, Filmography." Fox News. FOX News Network, 03 Jan. 2008. Web. 07 May 2012. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,193740,00.html?sPage=fnc.entertainment/madonna.
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