mtv: the art and the artists

Me in my Adam Ant phase.

Today, let’s talk about the art of music videos and the artists that starred in them. I’ll be talking exclusively about music videos of the 1980s. While there were some great videos in the nineties, MTV started the steep slide downhill as it focused more on reality shows and game shows. 

Read this essay to the end to see a list of my 25 favorite eighties music videos. ​

Next week – Generation X: No seatbelt, no helmet, no problem. If you enjoy this article, please tell your friends! 

Today, let’s talk about the art of music videos and the artists that starred in them. I’ll be talking exclusively about music videos of the 1980s. While there were some great videos in the nineties, MTV started the steep slide downhill as it focused more on reality shows and game shows. 

Read this essay to the end to see a list of my 25 favorite eighties music videos. 

A few of the musical acts of the 1960s and 1970s managed to successfully transition into the video era, including Cher, Billy Joel, The Kinks, Ozzy Osbourne, Robert Plant, David Bowie, ZZ Top, Bruce Springsteen, Don Henley, Tina Turner, Lionel Ritchie, Van Halen, Queen, Tom Petty, Genesis, Aerosmith, and of course, Michael Jackson. But MTV also made stars out of artists who might never have hit it big without the visuals of the medium. 

Culture Club, Duran Duran, Billy Idol, Men at Work, The Eurythmics, Cyndi Lauper, George Michael, Madonna, INXS, Paula Abdul, and others released outstanding music videos. They had sex appeal. They were unconventional. Their videos had a little something extra. Although these musicians were very talented, it’s hard to deny that videos boosted their popularity far beyond what it might have been without MTV. 

MTV also helped promising young directors make a name for themselves before they moved on to movies. David Fincher directed videos for Madonna and other artists before directing Se7en, Fight Club, and Gone Girl. Russell Mulcahey was Duran Duran’s favorite director and also created the first video to air on MTV, “Video Killed the Radio Star.” He directed the movies Razorback and Highlander. Gore Verbinski (The Ring, Pirates of the Caribbean, Mouse Hunt) started in music videos, as did Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, The Replacement Killers, The Equalizer). Fuqua directed Gangsta’s Paradise by Coolio. Before he directed Transformers, Armageddon, and Bad Boys, Michael Bay created videos for Lionel Ritchie, The Divinyls, and Meat Loaf. 

Movie directors who were already famous also added music videos to their resumes: Gus Van Sant, Brian DePalma, Paul Thomas Anderson, Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, William Friedken, Tobe Hooper, and Tim Burton. 

John Landis, the director of Animal House, The Blues Brothers, Coming to America, Trading Places, and An American Werewolf in London, was tapped by Michael Jackson to direct “Thriller.” When it was released, “Thriller” was the most expensive music video ever produced, costing $900,000. It clocked in at 13 minutes and was an homage to cheesy horror movies of the 1950s, such as I Was a Teenage Werewolf. “Thriller” was the first music video inducted into the Library of Congress National Film Registry. Deservedly so. I remember when it premiered. It was an event! 

Jackson had already broken into MTV’s mostly white narrowcast with two other videos: “Billie Jean” and “Beat It.” Nearly forty years after it premiered, “Billie Jean” became the first 1980s music video by a solo artist to reach 1 billion views on YouTube. “Beat It” imagined Jackson, in that iconic red jacket, mediating between two fighting street gangs. Eighty actual gang members played in the video alongside 18 professional dancers and four breakdancers. Jackson set the bar high with these two videos and “Thriller.” 

Music videos ranged from the simple to the elaborate, from transcendent to transgressive. The transgressive ones faced censorship from within MTV or due to outside pressures of television executives, religious organizations, advertisers, and groups like the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC). The PMRC, spearheaded by Tipper Gore, targeted individual songs, albums, album covers, and music videos. It created the Filthy Fifteen list that led to Senate hearings, parental advisory stickers, and MTV relegating select videos to late-night hours. 

MTV either edited out parts of music videos or banned them altogether. Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical” was chopped up due to its sexual overtones and homosexual subtext. “Girls on Film,” by Duran Duran, was heavily edited due to bare-breasted women in mud wrestling contests. The channel cut out male nudity (coal miners showering) in Billy Joel’s blue-collar story about “Allentown.” Network executives found “When Doves Cry” by Prince too explicit. They also didn’t care for the crotch grabs in Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher.” Frankie Goes to Hollywood released a video for “Relax” that was utterly un-airable and had to create a second one to get any time on MTV. 

MTV would only show Cher’s hit “If I Could Turn Back Time” after 9:00 p.m. due to the protests of military personnel and their families. In the video, Cher dances around in a leather thong and not much else, straddles a cannon, and flirts with Navy members aboard the USS Missouri. For some reason, the Navy approved filming the video on a battleship because they thought it would be suitable for recruitment. They argued that the whole costume affair was a bait-and-switch by Cher and the director and that it was disrespectful because the Missouri was the site of the Japanese surrender in World War II. I can only say that the video is something to see, and I saw it often on MTV. 

Madonna liked to cross boundaries and push buttons in her videos, particularly for songs from her Like a Prayer album and subsequent releases. Mary Lambert (Pet Sematary) directed “Like a Prayer,” a video that brought down an entire Pepsi advertising campaign. The video, steeped in themes of sexual and religious ecstasy, along with threads of anti-racism, showed Madonna with stigmata singing against a background of burning crosses. Pepsi dumped her commercial almost immediately; even the Pope weighed in on the video’s controversial content. 

The list of censored or banned videos would go on and on, but other videos were just fun. I recall “All Night Long” by Lionel Ritchie. Produced by Mike Nesmith (The Monkees again!) and directed by Bob Rafelson (Five Easy Pieces), this colorful video exudes joy. So does Cyndi Lauper’s song “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” and Wham’s “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.” The B-52s hit the fun button hard with “Love Shack” and “Roam.” Duran Duran goofed around in “Rio,” and Eddie Van Halen couldn’t stop smiling while he played guitar in “Jump.” 

Some artists leaped right over silly to downright weird. Ozzy released “Bark at the Moon,” using Rick Baker, the make-up artist for “Thriller” and An American Werewolf in London. Men Without Hats evoked merry old England with folk dancing, mummers, and a maypole. Bonnie Tyler roamed the halls of a creepy boarding school for boys with glowing eyes in “A Total Eclipse of the Heart.” Falco channeled Mozart in “Rock Me, Amadeus,” and Genesis brought out creepy puppets for “Land of Confusion.” Twisted Sister used slapstick comedy to proclaim, “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” Thomas Dolby visited the Home for Deranged Scientists for a bit of shock treatment in “She Blinded Me with Science” while Queen steered a flying car through Metropolis for “Radio Ga Ga.” You didn’t think I would forget to mention flying cars, did you? 

Other musicians tried to tackle serious issues in their videos. “1999” by Prince, “It’s a Mistake” by Men at Work, and “99 Luftballons” by Nena are just three of many videos that address nuclear war. ’Til Tuesday took aim at domestic violence with “Voices Carry” while Suzanne Vega shined a light on child abuse with “Luka.” Madonna reflected on grief and family dynamics in “Oh Father.” Midnight Oil supported aboriginal land rights in “Beds are Burning.” Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five shared “The Message” about inner city poverty, while in “Fight the Power,” Public Enemy challenged institutional racism, cultural appropriation, and lack of black representation. U2 mourned the Troubles in Northern Ireland with “Sunday Blood Sunday.” 

Female representation could be problematic in music videos. Many times, women were objectified, scantily clad while they danced around the screen. “Addicted to Love” reduced women to heavily made-up clones, serving as a backdrop for Robert Palmer. Female exploitation was extreme in heavy metal videos, specifically hair bands. I remember Tawny Kitaen writhing around on David Coverdale’s Jaguars while Whitesnake sang “Here I Go Again.” 

On the other hand, some artists championed female empowerment, including Madonna (“Express Yourself”), Cyndi Lauper (“She Bop”), Janet Jackson (“Nasty”), Pat Benatar (“Love is a Battlefield”), and Tina Turner (“Better Be Good to Me”). 

As for the LGBTQ community…some artists were out of the closet, including Bronski Beat, Holly Johnson (Frankie Goes to Hollywood), Boy George (Culture Club), the Indigo Girls, and Elton John. Some were in the process of coming out, such as k.d. lang. Others, such as George Michael, struggled to share their genuine identities with the public. 

Outside of the artists and their songs, music videos also highlighted groundbreaking technologies. “You Might Think” by The Cars was one of the first to use computer graphics. “Money for Nothing” by Dire Straits used early 3D computer animation. “Take on Me” by A-ha rotoscoped live-action sequences with pencil sketches for an incredible thrill ride of a video. 

The GOAT for visual effects in eighties videos has to be “Sledgehammer” by Peter Gabriel. It had all the -tions: claymation, pixilation, and stop motion. Gabriel spent sixteen hours lying under a sheet of glass as the crew shot the video one frame at a time. Directed by Stephen Johnson (who also directed the first season of Peewee’s Playhouse), “Sledgehammer” won nine MTV video awards in 1987. It holds up exceptionally well today. 

Some music videos didn’t break new ground and didn’t have complicated storylines or cameos by famous actors. Instead, they focused on the performance of the song. Many of them were fantastic. I’m thinking of “Cult of Personality” by Living Colour, “Paradise City” by Guns N’ Roses, “Dancing in the Dark” by Bruce Springsteen, “Little Red Corvette” by Prince, “Walk This Way” by RunDMC featuring Aerosmith, “Kickstart My Heart” by Motley Crue, “Fire Woman” by The Cult, and “Get on Your Feet” by Gloria Estefan. 

As music videos took hold in American culture, movie studios used them as tools to promote their latest films. Music video historians cite Flashdance as the first movie to lean into MTV. Others quickly followed, including Footloose, Top Gun, Ghostbusters, Beverly Hills Cop, Purple Rain, A View to a Kill, The Goonies, Back to the Future, Pretty in Pink, Batman, and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. 

MTV encouraged us to reflect on how we could improve the world through personal action. So, what did this cultural phenomenon mean to Generation X? It influenced clothing, shoes, hairstyles, jewelry, and cosmetics. Even interior design reflected the MTV aesthetic. More importantly, through awareness campaigns and video content, MTV encouraged us to reflect on how we could improve the world through personal action. 

What did MTV mean to you? Which music videos or artists did you love?

So, as promised, here are my 25 favorite videos from the eighties, in no particular order: 

​“Beat It”
“Thriller”
“Hungry Like the Wolf”
“Sweet Dreams”
“Wrapped Around Your Finger”
“Girls Just Want to Have Fun”
“It’s a Mistake”
“New Year’s Day”
“Roam”
“Take on Me”
“What’s Love Got to Do with It?”
“Rio”
“Don’t Come Around Here No More”
“Material Girl”
“Sledgehammer”
“Father Figure”
“Need You Tonight”
“Welcome to the Jungle”
“Paradise City”
“Oh Father”
“Sowing the Seeds of Love”
“Cherish”
“Express Yourself”
“Free Fallin’”
“Higher Ground”