"As revolutionary moments go, it wasn’t particularly glamorous. ”We were in a bar in Fort Lee, N.J.,” says MTV Networks CEO Tom Freston...the first thing you saw was the MTV logo superimposed over the flag an astronaut is sticking into the moon. ”It was public domain,” Freston recalls. ”We said, ‘Hey, let’s rip off man’s greatest moment.’ It seemed a rock & roll thing to do.” Then came the debut clip, the Buggles’ ”Video Killed the Radio Star,” one of the most prophetic three and a half minutes in pop history."
"Eighteen years later, it’s hard to quantify MTV’s effect on the music and movie industries — or to imagine life before it. Among other things, the channel accelerated film-editing techniques, attenuated attention spans, and foisted Jesse Camp upon us. ”Records probably still break more from radio,” says Sire Records honcho Seymour Stein, ”but nothing has the reach of MTV.” The 100 Greatest Moments in Rock Music: The '80s, Entertainment Weekly, 28th May 1999
At MTV's peak in the 1980's it revolutionised how popular music artists appealed to their target audience of teenagers and young adults, playing music videos 24 hours a day from artists ranging from Dire Straits, Duran Duran, Adam Ant and launching the super-stardom of artists such as Michael Jackson and Madonna who dominated the decade with coming up with new concepts for music videos that would premier on MTV and see their sales sky rocket and their fan-bases explode. Suddenly videos had higher budgets,fans could learn the choreography and copy the dress of their icons. With videos such as Thriller in 1983 help break black artists into the forefront of American culture in new ways. Before YouTube and Spotify, MTV was a window to what was new, current and popular.
No comments:
Post a Comment