I Want MY MTV.....

Before the Internet, before 900 plus channels on television, before cable was commonplace MTV played videos 24 hours a day every day. As a tween, I knew I could turn on MTV and it would play songs I liked. I also knew I had to be careful because MTV was outlawed in my house; ironically, my parents let me stay up till the wee hours of the morning watching Night Tracks on TBS….

Moreover the videos produced and played required creativity and employed story-telling techniques such as character development, point of view, and theme. Video’s left a mark in ones memory regardless of how one felt about the song. Lionel Ritchie’s “Hello,” Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” Van Halen’s “Right Now” and Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy” all evoke vivid memories of watching MTV on my parents 19 inch TV. In 1986 MTV was so popular that the famed Chicago Bears produced a video to their “Super Bowl shuffle.”

I started to form a thesis that MTV killed the Video Star. I then had the opportunity to chat with Tim Nordwind the Bass Player for the band OKGO, a band best known and made popular by their music videos. In 2006 You Tube Video Awards named their “Here is Goes Again” Most Creative Video and in 2007 the band won a Grammy for Best Short Form Video for the same song.

The elaborately choregraphed video of the band dancing on treadmills which, according to Wikepedia, is, “This video was viewed by over one million people on the media site YouTube in the first six days. As of April 2010, the original video upload for "Here It Goes Again" has been viewed over 50 million times, putting it in 42nd place for the most views of any video and 29th place for most viewed music video as well as the 7th most favorited video and the top favorited music video of all time on YouTube."

Tim Nordwind offered new incites on the topic: "Maybe in it’s early day’s people were figuring out the art form, but then it was quickly taken over by labels who used videos as commercials for their artists. The videos were all about filing 100 slots per year that would appeal to advertisers who were selling skate shoes and energy drinks…advertisers who would by ad space on MTV for Viacom."

Quickly videos went from an art form to barely dressed people shaking their butts for the camera. When I asked Nordwind about this her said, “Yeah, even that stuff had some sort of market appeal.”

Marketing killed the Video Star?

So what does the demise of MTV mean for the future of music videos? According to Tim Nordwind this is allowing bands to be more creative: "What’s interesting, now that labels are dying, MTV doesn’t play videos anymore and the very rules that defined 20 years of video making just don’t apply anymore. Now there’s this whole new era of video making that is simply about the art form and not about selling the band, CD or tennis shoes. Videos exist on their own as a separate piece."

I must be getting old because I then declared that there is very little creativity in music anymore to which he responded:

Ha,that not true at all. Music is healthier than ever; it’s just the record business that’s not doing so great. There are a ton of amazing bands out there; you just have to go online to find them for the most part because they’re not being forced down your throat by some top down approach.

Internet saved the Video Star.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK_Go

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv5zWaTEVkI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w&feature=channel