Said Martha Quinn, commemorating the beginning of MTV, 45 years ago today.
Everyone always likes to say the first video was "Video Killed the Radio Star," but what was the next video and the next? I found out:
- “Video Killed the Radio Star” – The Buggles
- “You Better Run” – Pat Benatar
- “She Won’t Dance With Me” – Rod Stewart
- “You Better You Bet” – The Who
- “Little Suzi’s on the Up” – Ph.D.
- “We Don’t Talk Anymore” – Cliff Richard
- “Brass in Pocket” – The Pretenders
- “Time Heals” – Todd Rundgren
- “Take It on the Run” – REO Speedwagon (first concert/live video aired)
- “Rockin’ the Paradise” – Styx
- “When Things Go Wrong” – Robin Lane and the Chartbusters
- “History Never Repeats” – Split Enz
- “Hold on Loosely” – .38 Special
- “Just Between You and Me” – April Wine
- “Sailing” – Rod Stewart
- “Iron Maiden” – Iron Maiden (first heavy metal video)
- “Keep on Loving You” – REO Speedwagon
- “Bluer Than Blue” – Michael Johnson
- “Message of Love” – The Pretenders
- “Mr. Briefcase” – Lee Ritenour
- “Double Life” – The Cars
- “In the Air Tonight” – Phil Collins
- “Looking for Clues” – Robert Palmer
- “Too Late” – Shoes
- “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” – Stevie Nicks with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
- “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?” – Rod Stewart
- “Surface Tension” – Rupert Hine
- “One Step Ahead” – Split Enz
- “Baker Street” – Gerry Rafferty
- “I’m Gonna Follow You” – Pat Benatar
- “Savannah Nights” – Tom Johnston
- “Lucille” – Rockestra
- “The Best of Times” – Styx
- “Vengeance” – Carly Simon
- “Wrathchild” – Iron Maiden
- “I Wanna Be a Lifeguard” – Blotto
- “Passion” – Rod Stewart
- “Oliver’s Army” – Elvis Costello
- “Don’t Let Him Go” – REO Speedwagon
- “Remote Control” / “Illegal” – The Silencers
- “Angel of the Morning” – Juice Newton (first country video)
- “Little Sister” – Rockpile with Robert Plant
- “Hold on to the Night” – Bootcamp
- “Dreamin’” – Cliff Richard
- “Is It You” – Lee Ritenour
- “Tusk” – Fleetwood Mac
- “He Can’t Love You” – Michael Stanley Band
- “Tough Guys” – REO Speedwagon
- “Rapture” – Blondie
- “Don’t Let Go the Coat” – The Who
- “Ain’t Love a Bitch” – Rod Stewart
- “Talk of the Town” – The Pretenders
- “Can’t Happen Here” – Rainbow
- “Thank You for Being a Friend” – Andrew Gold
- “You Better You Bet” – The Who (first repeat)
- “Bring It All Home” – Gerry Rafferty
- “Sign of the Gypsy Queen” – April Wine
- “The Man with the Child in His Eyes” – Kate Bush
- “Message of Love” – The Pretenders (repeat)
- “All Night Long” – Rainbow
- “Boys Keep Swinging” – David Bowie
- “Rat Race” – The Specials
- “Just Between You and Me” – April Wine (repeat)
- “Once in a Lifetime” – Talking Heads
- “Victim” – Bootcamp
- “Tonight’s the Night (Gonna Be Alright)” – Rod Stewart
- “Cruel to Be Kind” – Nick Lowe
- “A Little in Love” – Cliff Richard
- “Take It on the Run” – REO Speedwagon (repeat)
- “Wild-Eyed Southern Boys” – .38 Special
- “Wuthering Heights” – Kate Bush
- “Celebrate the Bullet” – The Selecter
- “More Than I Can Say” – Leo Sayer
- “A Message to You, Rudy” – The Specials
- “In the Air Tonight” – Phil Collins (repeat)
- “Heart of Glass” – Blondie
- “Oh God, I Wish I Was Home Tonight” – Rod Stewart
- “Kid” – The Pretenders
- “Wrathchild” – Iron Maiden (repeat)
- “Come What May” – Lani Hall and Herb Alpert
- “I Got You” – Split Enz
- “Sister Disco” – The Who
- “Fashion” – David Bowie
- “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” – Stevie Nicks with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (repeat)
- “Love Stinks” – J. Geils Band
- “Johnny & Mary” – Robert Palmer
- “Tomorrow Night” – Shoes
- “Lucille” – Rockestra (repeat)
- “Rockin’ the Paradise” – Styx (repeat)
- “Prime Time” – The Tubes
- “One Step Ahead” – Split Enz (repeat)
- “Hold on Loosely” – .38 Special (repeat)
- “Cruel You” – Shoes
- “Little Sister” – Rockpile with Robert Plant (repeat)
- “Calling All Girls” – Hilly Michaels
- “Keep on Loving You” – REO Speedwagon (repeat)
- “I Was Only Joking” – Rod Stewart
- “You Better You Bet” – The Who (repeat)
- “Time Heals” – Todd Rundgren (repeat)
- “Let’s Go” – The Cars
Posts
39 comments:
MTV isn't MTV anymore. It's housewives from bitchy Pettyville.
"MTV created a space where we felt like we all went to the same school, and I like to call that school MTV high."
I always found MTV painfully boring. To extend the analogy, I guess I was home schooled.
Lots of good bands and artists in that list. Some of my faves, anyway.
I knew it existed but I never watched.
I want my MTV is the quintessential MTV song. Still holds up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGubtxDwhqU
I loved MTV. It wasn't something you tuned into to watch. It was like playing music always was, something you had on while you were doing other things, but you could also watch. It was an electronic campfire, providing a unity of the youth culture, and a great way to explore music and video craft. I miss it. In my 20's it was always on everywhere we went. To this day, when I hear those songs I see the video in my head.
A very very white playlist. But that didn’t last long. With Yo MTV Raps and all the Michael Jackson videos, the channel wound up breaking down or at least shortening the musical fences between the races.
That list also has no country. I don’t think that changed over MTVs lifespan as an actual music channel. Took much longer for country to be respectable across all whites than it did for whites to adopt black genres. CC, JSM
Since we didn’t have cable I was unaware of MTV until a year later when I entered grad school. A good number of those songs mean nothing to me.
I did forgot about Robin Lane & the Chartbusters. “When Things Go Wrong” got a lot of airplay on WBCN in Boston since they were a local act.
About half are forgotten songs that don't even get played on oldies stations anymore. It was the videos that made them interesting.
MTV was like a national pop, rock, hard rock, new wave, alternative, and to a lesser degree r&b and later in their development rap and grunge channel. What this did was keep the “top 40” full of all these genres. And that was cool. You had to go through things you didn’t like to find what you you were looking for, and in that process, sometimes found an appreciation for the things that didn’t register in the beginning. The decline of MTV and the deregulation of radio (turning local markets into finely tuned genre syndicates) ended this “be a part of all popular music” culture and artists were pushed increasingly into one of the lanes these genre radio stations could identify. And it’s all changing (changed) again with streaming. But I liked that mtv effect on popular music culture.
I remember when my best friend got cable--and MTV! We were so excited. Looking back, I think MTV might have been the beginning of "TV as background noise."
It was ubiquitous in '82 and '83. Many of the student television lounges at my college had it running all day long. People would walk in, sit down for a while, watch a few videos, then go off to class or something else. The first few years they took chances on bands that weren't big and that was cool, but over time the format tightened considerably. The one problem that's evident from the list of the first 100 videos is that it did exclude a lot of black artists. But in retrospect it's amazing to see Robin Lane and the Chartbusters and the Michael Stanley Band represented.
And no blacks in the whole list?
Well, I suppose it is a reminder that whites did once make pop music ...
I was 20 when it debuted in 81, and that was the perfect age. Second the experience of it often being on in various places on campus.
"Little Suzi's on the Up" is awesome. Never heard it before. Thanks, AA!
shout out to Fred Astair and Ginger Rogers
wow
Top One Hit Wonders of the '80's
"Little Suzy's on the Up" is like the anti-Sex Pistols anthem. You want to start a fight in a mosh pit? Scream these lyrics at SId Vicious. Little Suzy is a right-wing gold digger. I love her.
Wake Up Little Susie
Sukie Waterhouse: Back in Love
Here is my favorite video of Dead or Alive
You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)
Jimmy Fallon and Paul Rudd remake, hilarious
You Spin Me Round
So cool that insanely great power popsters Shoes had 3 songs in that first 100. Was fortunate to see/hear them 3 times overs the years, as they generally remained in the midwest.
Bow Wow Wow I Want Candy
I never saw Jazz on MTV but this Dizzy Gillespie song is amazing.
Manteca
I'm a little surprised that nobody mentioned Michael Nesmith who was in the Monkees, but was really a lot of the early driving force behind turning pop music into a video-per-song TV show format.
Sorry, heading out to listen to Brass In Pocket. Byeeee!
I remember Little Suzy's On the Up!
Now it's going to be in my head all night... unless I can replace it with some April Wine or .38 Special, two bands I never heard after high school.
Once my family got cable, when I was in college and dating a guy who was a huge (this is a strange combination) Springsteen and Rush fan, I used to keep it on for HOURS when one of those songs was in "power rotation," waiting for the video to come on. (Springsteen had a lot more of those than Rush - this was the era of Born In the USA, the beginning of his ignominious decline.)
Oh, and bagoh, if you came up with "electronic campfire" yourself, for heaven's sake trademark it immediately. That's exactly what it was.
Oops, sorry for the Susie misspelling - I just went with the last one in the thread.
Saint Croix, thank you for the one hit wonder list! That was a fun 13 minutes.
Pedantry alert: I believe there is actually a definition of "one hit wonder" that involves having only one song in the top 40? 100? In your entire career - and I don't think all of these songs meet that criterion. But it was a lot of fun.
And spoiler alert: my sister is the only person I know who knows a song by Dexy's Midnight Runners (NOT the number one in this list) other than Come On Eileen. She was a fan of the band back in the day.
Holy shit that's a lot of Rod Stewart. What the hell?
Also REO Speedwagon. Ugh.
Looking through the list, I'm also intrigued to see two songs by one of the great lost power pop bands, Shoes, who were out of Waukegan. They should have been bigger than they were. I'm surprised that the MTV exposure didn't help them.
I started watching MTV around 1982 at my Madison girlfriend's house while I was in college. She was a townie like I was. U2"s Gloria was an MTV favorite of mine: . link. I had a chance to see U2 around that time in Madison at Headliners IIRC. Small club. Coulda shoulda woulda.
I wonder if they ever played Stuffin' Martha's Muffin, by Mojo Nixon?
Oops, sorry for the Susie misspelling
heh, you got it wrong again
it's Suzi in that song
Uzi with an S
"sexy uzi" = Suzi
Susie, the girls were softer back in the 1950's
Susie = soft, nice, trusting girl, she falls asleep with her head on your shoulder
Suzy = kind of a rocker, kind of sweet, depends on her mood
Suzi = orgasms and sudden death, and the jury will never convict her
I thought Suki Waterhouse was dead, but that's her big sister, Amy.
Lovely song. She just had a baby with Robert Pattison, the vampire. They might be secretly married.
Sharon Stone, that vixen, let the cat out of the bag. You can't trust these damn celebrities with your secret marriages, that's for sure.
During a joint interview with Extra at the Los Angeles premiere of The Drama on Tuesday, March 17, Pattinson and Zendaya were asked what the biggest secret they've ever kept is. Zendaya, 29, playfully teased that there was "nothing that comes to mind" amid Tom Holland marriage buzz before Pattinson revealed that his secret is "the same" as Zendaya's.
Yeah yeah. Flirt with your fans. Don't tell them shit!
I wonder if they ever played Stuffin' Martha's Muffin, by Mojo Nixon?
heh
poor Martha
here is Mojo on a
redneck rampage
I don't think California is their target market
Debbie Gibson Is Pregnant With My Two-Headed Love Child
Here's another one with no music video
that photograph is pretty good
I hate the media, too!
Johnny Cash, Cocaine Blues
Starkville City Jail is another great one.
They did shoot some video at one of his prison concerts
Post a Comment
Please use the comments forum to respond to the post. Don't fight with each other. Be substantive... or interesting... or funny. Comments should go up immediately... unless you're commenting on a post older than 4 days. Then you have to wait for us to moderate you through. It's also possible to get shunted into spam by the machine. We try to keep an eye on that and release the miscaught good stuff. We do delete some comments, but not for viewpoint... for bad faith. Also: No italics, even briefly. Use asterisks for emphasis. And don't play with the format by changing fonts or using boldface or all caps. Never include more than one extra line break between paragraphs.