Growing Up with Pop Music and MTV
I was born one year and seven months before the rocket launched and The Buggles, “Video Killed the Radio Star” first aired on August 1st, 1981. MTV and I grew up together-we were childhood buddies. Our first meeting occurred in 1985, when I saw Madonna’s “Material Girl” video. My older brother introduced me to the world of music videos and I was hooked. As MTV and I grew older, we continued to have similar interests. It wasn’t until I first saw the Spice Girls, “Wannabe” video that I began to realize we had grown apart.
I cannot discredit all the wonderful moments we shared together, however. For better or worse, MTV was my touchstone for music, the way I viewed the world, and influenced just about everything pop culture-wise in America to this day. From the videos themselves to shows like The Real World, MTV created the rules by which I lived by.
Chris Connelly, former MTV personality, described how life before MTV was for artists: “Music on TV was in a ghetto. You were so grateful when Elvis Costello turned up on Tom Snyder’s show or when the Clash would play Saturday Night Live. So many bands hadn’t broken through in any major way. The new wave bands from the Cars or Cheap Trick, to Elvis or the Clash. Their opportunities to make any kind of an impression on television were so few and far between.” MTV changed all of this.
I have never lived in a world where videos did not accompany music. As I mentioned earlier, Madonna was the first artist whose music influenced my young soul. It is hard to distinguish whether it was the video that led me to enjoy the music or vice versa. In the case of Madonna, I now believe that it was her funky image that led me to sing “Material Girl” incessantly. Others too had taken notice to her music through MTV. According to Wikipedia.com, “Although the album [Madonna, her first album] sold only moderately at first, thanks to heavy rotation on a brand new cable channel called MTV, Madonna gained nationwide exposure and the album peaked at number eight on the Billboard chart, and went platinum five times.”
Several other artists also benefited from selling an image through MTV. Co-founder, Bob Pittman said: “The concept was ‘let’s alter the form of television to make it work for music.’ Because music is really about mood, emotion, attitude. TV is about a narrative story. So we sort of destroyed the narrative-story aspect of TV and really made it all about attitude.” It was this supposed cool, hip, anti-authority, rock ‘n’ roll attitude that came under fire in the early 80s, and eventually led to the image, not talent-driven programming that remains today.
Although rock ‘n’ roll has been constantly censored from its inception, MTV added a visual element that critics were quick to attack. A study performed by the National Coalition on Television Violence in 1983 concluded that, ” The intensive sadistic and sexual violence of a large number of rock music videos is overwhelming. It’s shocking to see this subculture of hate and violence becoming a fast-growing element of rock music entertainment for the young.” This and another academic study led to some communities threatening to pull MTV from their cable line-up. Under this pressure, MTV created a screening system in 1984 for all videos. Eric Nuzum writes in his book, Parental Advisory Music Censorship in America: “Guidelines used by the Standards Department, through inconsistently applied and completely open to subjectivity, rule out videos showing drug use; excessive alcohol consumption; explicit, graphic, or excessive sexual practices; gratuitous violence (such as knifings or physical restraint); or derogatory characterizations of ethnic or religious groups.”
When this is taken into account, an even more sculpted image of most artists’ work is what viewers essentially based their views on popular music upon. Fortunately for MTV, there’s not a whole lot of screening going on anymore, because, well, they rarely show videos today.
The legacy of MTV’s earlier work of creating music stars through a highly polished image, has led to (in my opinion) its ultimate downfall. Through the late 80s and early to mid-90s, I was still on board. I was an avid fan of the “Seattle sound,” and videos by Pearl Jam, Nirvana, The Breeders, and Soundgarden (to name a few) changed what music I listened to. Before these bands broke, I was, like most of America, listening to the poppy sounds of Whitney Houston and hair metal bands like Poison and Warrant. I have always felt that these Seattle bands struck the right chord with me because I was moving into adolescence just as they became popular. During this time, I was an avid watcher of 120 Minutes, where I could see videos by not only the Seattle bands I adored, but also, bands like The Lemonheads, Dinosaur Jr, and what came to be my all-time favorite band, The Afghan Whigs.
I remember rushing home from an eighth grade dance to catch Nirvana Unplugged, and being mesmerized every second of the performance. By the end of their rendition of “Where Did You Sleep Last Night,” I found myself in tears because there was such sadness in Kurt Cobain’s singing that resonated with me and, I’m sure, millions of other viewers. Five months after the performance, Cobain committed suicide. Alex Coletti, the executive producer or the show said: “He [Kurt] was the one who suggested the stargazer lilies, those big, white lilies and he wanted more candles like a funeral. He said, ‘Yeah, yeah, like a funeral. That’ll be cool.'” With the death of Cobain, also came the death of relevant artists on MTV. Throughout the late 80s and early 90s, more and more non-music related shows also began to invade the network, speeding along the decaying process.
The show that impacted my life and most of television today, was The Real World. On Saturday mornings, MTV would show marathons of the reality TV saga, and I would be sucked in for hours. Originally created because MTV wanted a soap opera, but didn’t want to pay for actors, writers or a set (supposedly), The Real World brought together the now infamous seven strangers, “picked to live in a house and have their lives taped to see what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real.” Co-creator/executive producer Mary-Ellis Bunim said of the cast that: “If they have anything in common, it’s that they’re in the process of defining themselves.”
Like Sebastian Bach of Skid Row fame stated, “I find myself morbidly fascinated with The Real World. It’s like watching a train wreck,” so did I. The first four seasons of the show were my favorite, but when the Miami cast was unveiled, and the premise changed, to where they had to also work together, I became less interested. The cast members also suddenly became model-attractive at this point, and also quite vapid. As Chuck Klosterman writes in Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs: “Technically, these people were completely different every year, but they were also exactly the same. And pretty soon it became clear that the producers of The Real World weren’t sampling the youth of America-they were unintentionally creating it. By now, everyone I know is one of seven defined strangers, inevitably hoping to represent a predefined demographic and always failing horribly. The Real World, is the real world, is the Real World, is the real world. It’s the same true story, even when it isn’t.” To its credit, I think The Real World did benefit my generation through its message of tolerance for a wide variety of lifestyles. Today, the influence of the show, although not the first reality show, can be seen on Survivor, Big Brother, and a whole host of other bad knock-offs.
It wasn’t just the cast of The Real World who were becoming more attractive. Around 1997, slowly, a pretty-boy, pretty-girl, talent-less explosion began strangling the network. Not only did my favorite programs like 120 Minutes disappear, but more non-music-related shows dominated its airwaves. It was at this time that I parted ways with MTV. Interesting, provoking music was not what Brittney Spears, Christina Aguilera, or N’SYNC brought to the table. These artists sold records because of what they looked like, and shows like TRL rewarded this. An artist who looked like Janis Joplin wouldn’t have a chance to have a hit video today because of MTV’s glossy look. Although I was briefly impressed with MTV2, soon I began seeing reruns of Jackass and Wildboyz creep into the all-video line-up and I eventually cut ties with that network, as well.
MTV changed the way everything on television looks. With its quick edits and odd camera angles, our viewing world is dizzying. There are between 1.5 and 3 million children today who have ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) or ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), according to The National Resource Center on ADHD and more adults are diagnosed with it everyday. MTV, although not directly responsible for this, has contributed to the fast-paced edits and clips that reinforce our short attention spans. MTV is everywhere, from car to peanut butter commercials, and magazine and newspaper design, its flashy residue has left its mark. As much as I’d like to say I said good-bye to it the day I cancelled my cable, it just isn’t true. It’s permeated the books I read, the network TV I watch, and the indelible images that crop up every time I turn on the radio. I am forever connected to it, because it has become inescapable.
