Welcome to the Hall of Eras! The 80s was a transformative time for me, as I was hitting all the big teen landmarks, but for the music industry also, which was going through an adolescence of its own. Its weird the way that popular music does this again and again. Starting out rough and naive, experimenting with new stuff and figuring things out, then gradually finding its normal in maturity, only to get blindsided by something new and starting the process over again. Its what keeps us coming back. The music video revolution may have started with Video Killed The Radio Star, but the transformation wasnt complete in my eyes until this song came out. There was this weekly video countdown show in St. Louis, hosted by the DJs of local pop station KHTR. Every Saturday night at 10, the KHTR lightning bolt would start flashing and then...man I dont even know how to describe this...there would be a man or a woman in a white suit, waving their arms like mad in a fogged out glass tube that was supposed to represent the DJ booth, I guess. You couldnt see the persons face and it was all on a black background, so I have no idea if it was them actually talking, but I doubt it. Anyway, I just wanted to bring up that memory to let you know what we were dealing with here. If you didnt have cable and wanted to watch music videos, you had to go to extreme lengths, such as staying up late on a weekend to watch a pantomime of local DJs (maybe) introduce videos in surreal chiaroscuro. So, theyd count down the top ten song requests of the previous week. For most of these, theyd only play a minute or two clip. For new entries or particularly hot songs, theyd show the whole video. And of course, they always showed the #1 video. Always. Except for that one time when this was the most requested song of the week. I liked the song, it was fun and bouncy and Id never seen the video and did the FazeMan just say theres NO VIDEO for this song?!? Thats unpossible! Every song has a music video! Even a crappy concert video will do, but you dont just not do a music video. How do you not do a video? This is the 80s, not the Depression! But apparently Matthew Wilder thought about doing a music video for what was to be his biggest hit and said Nah, Im good. In lieu of the #1 songs music video, KHTR played the video for the #2 song of the week, which just happened to be Thriller. The contrast wasnt lost on me. The top spots were held by the most expensive, groundbreaking, critically-acclaimed music video up to that point...and no video at all. Matthew Wilder went on to have one more decent top 40 hit (for which he *did* do a music video), while MJs videos became a legacy of chart-topping excess and, in the main, excellence. Its a bit unfair to compare an already-established artist to a one hit wonder, but there are quite a few artists who, with the help of one good first music video, became established artists in their own right. Its also telling that, since then, with the exception of a very few outliers (Im thinking specifically of Sherriffs When Im With You), there hasnt been an American #1 song that didnt have a promo video. This clip is taken from Solid Gold (for you Brits out there, think TOTP with Marilyn McCoo instead of Jimmy Savile), again as an illustration of how far a hard-up music fan will go to get their fix.
Posted on: Wed, 03 Dec 2014 16:32:26 +0000
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