Mar 27 2009
The Great Music of the 1980s: Video Created the Radio Star
The Buggles had it totally wrong. Not only was their look and sound out of date to be the first video ever shown on MTV, the gist of their song (though topical) “Video Killed The Radio Star” was the polar opposite of what happened. No, the next great revolution of 1980s music was the introduction of the video. And, my friends, video made the radio star.
Right from the beginning of the decade the biggest album of all time, Michael Jackson’s Thriller, rode out on wave of the best videos of the time and maybe the best videos of all time. Who doesn’t remember the gang fight in “Beat It” or the zombie scenes in “Thriller.” It was the visual appeal of the videos mixed with some good music that catapulted Michael Jackson from ordinary pop singer into, unfortunately, the whacked out frozen space monkey he became.
Others followed with hit videos as calling cards for their new albums. Billy Idol, Duran Duran, Culture Club, Cindy Lauper and the rest took up full time rotation on MTV. Sales soared and interest was revived in a music industry that sank under the weight of endless prog rock songs and difficult economic times (sound familiar?). It gave viewers a connection to the new wave of music in a way that was impossible before–think American Bandstand and Ed Sullivan as the ways to see bands. For me, we got MTV for a while and then our premium cable got cancelled. For me, I watched videos anytime I could, mostly at friend’s houses. Locally (Bakersfield then), I could only watch from 4-5pm when the ubiquitous Richard Blade played 1 hour of videos on KCAL 9. Sometimes he had a cool vid here and there but mostly it was the same stuff but I gobbled it up.
The introduction of the video not only helped radio it created pop music. Videos obviously put a high price on the visuals but moreover they killed radio stars that did not. Coming out of the 1970s the biggies of music got crushed by the video-making machine. Already old and totally out of date two years later, bands like the Eagles, Boston, Styx and every other classic rock name vanished overnight under the harsh light of video cameras. It took out the biggies too: Bob Dylan, who was already a god by then and was riding a crest of creative power from Blood on the Tracks and the double-barrel bravado of Blonde on Blonde, made 9 years in a row of horrible albums (his lone decent album of the era was Oh Mercy, not great but at least a few great songs). Neil Young checked out of the scene with the worst records ever (Trans?), the rockabilly album and plenty of other crap no one will ever listen to (hmmmm…sounds familiar).
The only rocker who figured it all out was Bruce Springsteen. He went underground for the excellent and sparse Nebraska but came back with a roar with Born In the U.S.A.. The thing that would make Bruce fans cringe was that this was largely on the greatness of the videos. “Dancing in the Dark” was a pretty lame single but the video with Coutney Cox and Bruce performing with his white shirt sleeves rolled up and the full band, made the single. Same goes for “Born in the U.S.A.”, “Glory Days” and “I’m on Fire”–all good songs but iconic hits because of their videos. Bruce figured it out.
Of course videos became more and more vapid and repetitive. For me it was killed in the late eighties when Aerosmith perfected and then killed the performance/storyline videos, hair bands showed an endless array of the same plastic girls (Whitesnake–no complaints from me) and performance acts, and rap millionaires scared white kids everywhere with endless gangsta cred clips. It all became so boring.
What about the great bands of the 1980s? Well, they made videos but they weren’t necessarily shown. 120 Minutes was my favorite show (yes, we got cable back) and I taped it on my VCR to watch it throughout the week (along with Young Ones and Monty Python). On this show, you could catch The Cure, The Smiths (my faves), REM (especially when they used to do an IRS label show ahead of 120 minutes) and more. By and large these videos were low production value, had a lot of slow motion clips to emphasize their theme, and did nothing to get them more stateside play. The videos, in effect, were a reaction to the mainstream primping, message videos shown the other 22 hours on MTV. They were purposefully subversive, hard to reach, not understandable and did not do the product placement (band image, hot chicks, cool rock star story) of the pop vids. My fave is the Replacements vid where Paul walks in, sits on the couch back to us, listens to the song, nothing happens and the song ends. Videos in the case of alternative never really brought these bands fame–they just weren’t cute enough.
Videos ultimately exhausted themselves and now they aren’t shown on any channel. The viewership moved over to reality shows (where you can see these same stars 20 years later!) and TMZ. Videos took radio right into the bin with them. No longer able to connect with the flat pop rock on the radio, people have stopped buying and sales have dropped dramatically. So it has come full circle: videos gave music companies life and videos took it away.
