![]() ![]() I loved MTV's Making the Video (I guess I liked feeling in-the-know about music even as a teen) and Britney’s ‘Toxic’ is the series standout for me. To this day I can remember how the spit take would make my stomach turn but I could never look away. – Elise Brisco Britney Spears, ‘Toxic’ ![]() The pings of the sitar were like a warning call for a video that was compelling every time MTV ran it. However, Missy Elliott’s “Get Ur Freak On” music video would quiet the chaos and grab everyone’s attention. I was the youngest child in a house full of teenagers so MTV was always the background noise to accompany the sibling bickering. When I finally heard this song performed live, Thom Yorke’s theremin-like voice slicing through my psyche like a laser, even then I couldn’t get the image of a nearly naked cartoon man chopping his own limbs off with a hatchet out of my head. – Barbara VanDenburgh Missy Elliott, 'Get Ur Freak On' Deep in the night was when they’d let the weird stuff rip, and in particularly heavy rotation was this hypnotically strange animated video. I was a teenage insomniac and would stay up until dawn mainlining MTV. – Kim Willis Radiohead, 'Paranoid Android' But it’s still a hoot and a half to see Andy Taylor gleefully off Nick Rhodes (who’s never looked lovelier) with a killer accordion button. Sure, Simon Le Bond, er, Bon’s bomb-detonating Walkman hasn’t aged well, nor has John Taylor’s sexily tousled mullet. “Get in, sit down and shut up,” my college bestie ordered when I showed up seconds before the worldwide premiere, the first of countless times we’d watch the video for this James Bond theme song. When it comes to being introduced to a brand new visual medium, you always remember your first. – Mary Cadden Duran Duran, ‘A View to a Kill’ While it might not have been iconic, but it made an impression. ![]() It was, after all, the first music video I had seen. Frida, with her haunting voice and feathered hair, languidly walking her way through the video, appeared on the screen. I went over to her house and we turned on MTV. I was 13 when MTV launched but unfortunately my house did not have cable TV. Who cared if no one understood what the lyrics meant when it all looked this good? – Melissa Ruggieri Frida, 'I Know There’s Something Going On' But being suave and dashing wasn’t enough, because they had to flaunt their coolness by jetting off to Antigua and pretending to sing while not falling off of a yacht. Featuring a trenchcoat-clad paparazzo stalking Jackson as he dances his way to a hotel, the choreographed video was among the first by a Black artist to win heavy rotation on MTV, and was followed by the more cinematic video for the album’s title track. – Gary Levin Duran Duran, ‘Rio’ MTV was still in its relative infancy when this single from Jackson’s “Thriller” was released in 1983 and helped define the cable network, which had quickly gained traction as a revolutionary new form of television that I watched constantly. Of course the channel evolved over the decades, both in the genres of music videos it promoted (moving from the early days of rock to pop and hip-hop) and the programming it offered (who can forget “Beavis and Butt-Head” and “The Real World”?)Īs MTV marks 40 years, we look back at the iconic music videos we remember watching on the radical network. What was the first music video shown on MTV? The Buggles' " Video Killed the Radio Star." ![]() In the early days, the network played music videos round-the-clock hosted by video jockeys (VJs). The premise was simple: Be television’s version of radio. 1, 1981.įorty years before we could summon music videos on demand, MTV was the destination for the latest, coolest and best of music on TV. It's hard to imagine how revolutionary MTV was when it launched Aug. ![]()
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