Rising Above The Noise Floor #3: How the MTV Generation Changed The World

I can still recall my first encounter with MTV. It was a video by Duran Duran called Hungry Like A Wolf. My sister and I had pleaded with our mother to get cable, just so that we could consume MTV culture twenty-four-seven. On that day in June of 1983 we huddled around the tv to witness our first music video. It was a beautiful thing! Dudes with style, singing an unbelievably cool song, fast paced cinematography, and edits to match its audience’s attention span. This was the stuff of teenagers, although I was not even close to a teenager yet. But still, this was revolutionary for anyone who was even close to a teenager. Older people who wanted to feel like teenagers, younger kids who wanted to be teenagers, and actual teenagers, all glued to the television awaiting the next big music video release.

I didn’t realize that I was actually fairly late to the party. MTV had actually made its debut for a relatively small New Jersey audience on August 1st, 1981 (KSU). The channel opened with the words “Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll!” (ABC). Followed by “…an array of space-themed imagery, including collaged footage from the Apollo 11 Moon landing…” (Liebig). According to multiple sources, the very first video to air on MTV was Video Killed The Radio Star, by a British new wave band called The Buggles. According to music experts from Kansas State University, this selection was one of intention. “MTV creators knew its cultural and musical impact would be huge, and the selection…served as the perfect harbinger for its impending significance” (KSU). “At the time, the network was a hopeful experiment spearheaded by television executives hoping to cash in by appealing to young music fans” (Liebig). “The concept behind MTV was simple–show music videos and content related to music all day long, every day–and it worked phenomenally…in its heyday it had a massive impact on the music landscape” (Vole). A whole channel devoted to music was definitely a novel approach, and in the early days it seemed that the channel would play just about any video they received (ABC News). According to a CNN article, the music fans were quite taken with the array of music videos presented by MTV, even though the early videos had limited budgets to work with.

As a child of the 80s, I can say that production quality was not the point, for us it was all about seeing our favorite musicians in the flesh. Seeing how they dressed, how they did their hair, how they played their guitars and drums. In most ways, I would say that we were quite blind to the budgets of our favorite videos. Many of the videos, looking back, were pretty ugly compared to modern standards, however, in the throws of it all, we were celebrating this new doorway into the lives of our heroes.

In retrospect, I see MTV in a bit of a different light. Compared to the access we have today, MTV was a bottleneck. It really chose your next favorite bands for you, though they presented the illusion of choice, the choices were so very limited. But, again, we didn’t care. It was all we had, and we celebrated it in every way. While marketing these bands to us, television executives were also building, around them, the fashion industry, choreography trends, video editing styles–essentially, they were building an entirely new culture. This new culture was being funneled through just one outlet, MTV, thus forming the MTV Generation.

Television and Music executives had found a new way of marketing their products. In this new paradigm, the quality of the music wasn’t always at the forefront. Instead, those who looked good on tv were often selling the most records (ABC, KSU). Over time, music labels began to increase the budgets for music videos, and this opened the door for game-changing videos, like the classic Thriller, by Michael Jackson, and countless others. And as is with capitalism, the more money that got involved, the higher the stakes grew. All of this seemed to be on an exponential growth curve, headed straight up to the moon.

Enter the MP3, and the internet. The momentum and propagation of MTVs influence seemed to make a dramatic shift in the 90s. As I recall, the scene shifted quite rapidly away from MTV culture and towards a primal digital culture. For me specifically, the signal that ended things was when Kurt Cobain committed suicide. Much of the allure of my musical heroes was stripped away for some time. Aside from Beavis & Butt-Head, many of us drifted away from the channel and its funnel of cultural influence. MTV’s focus began to shift towards more and more reality tv shows and my friends and I were drifting away to college, where access to computers and reasonably fast internet was filling the void that MTV culture had left behind.

Despite the rapid “falling out of love” phase, much of my persona has been built around the foundation placed under me as a teen and preteen, by MTV culture. A few years after the fall of Cobain, I began to fall in love with music again. This time, however, I was in control. I began to seek out my own music, through the internet, and more importantly, I began learning guitar and started my journey as a songwriter, and recording artist. I still idolized all of those MTV icons, only now, I wanted to be them!

Before I wrap this up, I would like to give thanks to all of the fashion advice I received from MTV and its many talking heads. I send all of my love to the various artists who inspired me, during that time, to find my own inner artist. But also, I would like to solidify exactly how the MTV Generation changed the world. First of all, and most importantly, the MTV phenomenon brought to the center stage music, and the music video as art forms. And even though MTV is not really “music television” anymore, it has left for us a legacy by which we, as musicians, can further express ourselves. Music videos require us to consider our role in fashion, dance, and our overall visual appeal has become a factor for all bands attempting to market themselves. Ultimately, MTV’s bottleneck served to define a measure of “cool” for music artists and their fans. A definition by which all artists are still influenced, whether they admit it or not. Most importantly, I would argue that the MTV generation forced the world to recognize young people as a force to be reckoned with. It defined us as a singular voice. And with that voice, according to CNN, we may have significantly influenced the 1992 presidential election by utilizing MTV’s Rock The Vote. So, there it is, we the MTV generation has and continues to be a force of change in the world. And in my humble opinion, I would say that we are a force for good!

My final thoughts regarding the MTV era hinge upon a comparison between MTV then and TikTok now. During the MTV revolution, the channel was almost solely responsible for the success of an artist. The bottleneck it created further separated the chasm between bands struggling to find success, and those who were already in the upper echelon. Bands who found themselves on MTV, were exponentially more likely to find dramatic success in the industry. This was likely quite disheartening, at the time, for working class bands who were far removed from the Sunset Strip, or those bands who weren’t connected to the inner circles of the scene at the time. However, as we now know, new technologies came around and crumbled the establishment to the ground. Abandoning the old bottleneck, and embracing the flood of musical talents out there.

I know it seems tough out there right now, there are so many bands to compete with, and how do you go viral on TikTok? Well, I don’t know. But here’s the secret that the big labels don’t want you to know. They have no clue either. According to an NPR article, “…a million examples of a lot of expensive campaigns…had no return…we can’t do it. It has to come from fans or the artist…” (Venkat). This revelation gives me hope that, in today’s climate, we the artists and fans are in control of our own destinies. TikTok may very well be the next MTV bottleneck, but this time its not record labels and television executives in conference rooms laying out the plan. No, this time it is the fans, and their artists on a social media platform deciding who makes the cut. It may still be equally challenging to find a break on TikTok, but the process has been democratized. I have an upcoming blog post that will be centered upon TikTok, but for now I will leave you with this little statistic, “13 out of the 14 Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 songs in 2022 were driven by significant viral trends on TikTok…It was a similar story in the UK, with 10 of the 12 No. 1s on the UK official Singles Chart driven by virality on TikTok” (Stassen). This is the new world, now let’s embrace it and make it work for us!

The next six blog entries in the series will be as follows: