Happy 25th Anniversary, MTV!

Hi All,

It was on August 1, 1981 that The Buggles' 'Video Killed the Radio Star' first blared its way onto a new TV station called 'MTV.' That prophetic song would mark the first in a trail of thousands of songs that came to life in a new art form: The Music Video. Combining film with music to tell a five-minute story was Genius. To this day, when I hear songs, I remember the video MTV made, the video I made myself in my head, or the video someone else made in their head (Bean has a killer video for 'Frozen' that should be used somewhere, by someone!). I also tend to write scenes in my head based on songs. So that nice little wedding I described for Snow Patrol's 'Chasing Cars?' That wasn't MY wedding. We all know MY wedding will take place in a small church in the country, and I won't be wearing white. haha But one of my characters will most certainly have a wedding exactly like that, near the beach, with that song as the inspiration.

I love what MTV did for us; it gave us a whole new appreciation for music. And along the way, it invented some incredible new forms of visual effects (Peter Gabriel's 'Sledgehammer,' anyone?). But mostly, MTV defined what was Happening in Pop Culture. MTV's Bride, Madonna, used that channel to provoke on several occasions (from the classic 'Like A Virgin' on the floor in a wedding gown routine to the classic 'Kissing Britney Spears' routine twenty years later) and frankly, without that channel, may not have seemed so 'controversial.'

While I'm not a huge fan of Reality TV (as a writer, I prefer scripted reality, smiles), I have to give MTV credit for shows like 'The Real World' that really started the genre. I also have to give MTV credit for being the pulse of youth in America. I don't watch MTV anymore, because I only care about the music, and I never see any music worth much on there anymore. But I guess I'll always have to respect what they did.

Some Great Moments on MTV

1) Seeing the 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' video for the first time. This video, and song, changed the landscape of music at the time. Cobain will always be one of my favorite people ever to live; this song was my introduction into his beautiful soul.

2) Madonna rolls around on the floor in a wedding dress. Sounds like 'not a big deal' now, but at the time, it was positively outrageous. You didn't roll around and pose for the camera in a wedding dress! Bean says her mom yelled for her from upstairs: "You've got to see what this girl is doing in this wedding dress!"

3) Like A Prayer/Pepsi/Madonna Does it Again. I remember watching 'The Cosby Show' that night for the sole purpose of seeing the Blessed Pepsi commercial with Madonna in it. The commercial avoided the pure shock of the video. The video was banned, people were offended, and I thought Madonna was the coolest person in the world.

4) The invention of The VJ. Adam Curry. Jesse. Carson Daly. We needed personalities to introduce these songs, right? Well, we got them.

5) The 'Thriller' video. The most expensive ever made at the time, and a mini-film. I love anything horror, so I loved it. It's still one of the coolest things I've seen on TV.

The irony is, we lived in the country so we had no cable. So the videos we saw were on 'Friday Night Videos' on NBC. The 'dream' was always to have MTV. So now that I have it, I don't watch it. But, The Music Video lives on!

Great Videos I Thought Up
1) Because he mentioned Jung and Mephistopholes, my Police videos were always waayyyyyy out there in Dreamland. I pictured landscapes straight out of Dali.
2) My 'Like A Virgin' included..well...some pretty hormonally-charged stuff. Needless to say.
3) My Springsteen videos were all in black and white. His music seemed so..rugged?
4) Likewise, my John Cougar Mellencamp videos all took place in my hometown.
5) And then there's those Tori Amos songs...which have never had good videos YET! Must I plan it all? :)

And as a ps, Check out This Blog.
This woman is a literary agent in NYC. She's killing me with her innate snarkiness. (I love innate snarkiness.)

Have a great day...