I grew up alongside MTV. From 1981 through 1987, so many of life’s greatest lessons washed over me from the comfort of my couch in the livingroom. I am a product of MTV and it dawns on me that this is the reason the world is so fucked up these days. Perhaps if today’s youth had the old MTV back, they wouldn’t be such hooligans. When I was a kid, you could be sure some disenfranchised 16-year old wouldn’t cover himself in peanutbutter, strap on an AK-47 and run headlong into the cafeteria with bloodlust in his eyes. No, he would let the genius found in music videos calm his troubled soul… maybe he’d pop open a coke, eat some cheetos, or a Taco Bell Superburrito… hey, the sky was the limit when Martha Quinn, JJ Jackson, Mark Goodman, Alan Hunter and Nina Blackwood were keeping us company with all the latest video hits. The Cold War might have raged outside, but the gentle glow of the television kept me warm… and sane.
Video Killed the Radio Star, Love is a Battlefield, Thriller, Hungry Like the Wolf, Pyromania, Jessie’s Girl, Jenny (867-5309), Centerfold, Let’s Dance… these were the music videos that grounded a nation of kids just like me who might otherwise have been doing much, much worse. I know that instead of doing bong hits and drinking Jack Daniels out of the bottle somewhere where I might get hurt, like outside, I was instead safely inside my house with George Thorogood and the Delaware Destroyers, drinkin’ alone.
Okay, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the fact that MTV in its current form, a form which emphasizes reality TV shows and NOT MUSIC, is not completely to blame for how completely bugshit crazy kids are today. Maybe if they would have had the opportunity to watch bands like Duran Duran, Pat Benatar, The Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Men At Work, and Michael Jackson when he was still black, they’d still be jacked up… Although, I doubt it.
Please, help me help them. Let’s bring back the real MTV. Link this post, steal the icon above and put it on your site. Together, we can make a difference… okay, its probably too late for anyone who bought Ashlee Simpson’s debut CD, but the rest of them might still be saved.
id like the old MTV back also. Remember when people got killed over things like a pair of Jordan’s or an eight ball jack?
Its interesting how having an older sibling who constantly had MTV on while I was growing up has basically put me into the same MTV generation as you. The videos that most stick out in my mind for some reason are Aretha Franklin’s Pink Cadilac and Wham’s Wake Me Up Before You Go Go.
Aretha frickin’ Franklin….on MTV! That would be unheard of today.
you need to go to other blogs and comment about it.. or something. – tratorria was good.
Agreed. The old eMpTyV was much better. I used to pop VHS tapes into my recorder and tape music videos for later viewing. I still have them somewhere, along with Beavis and Butthead and Aeon Flux episodes. Ricky Rachtman (sp?), Kennedy, Dr. Dre and Ed Lover… Ahhhh. Pointless nostalgia.