by Randy Markley

Created on: May 06, 2010

When MTV blasted its first video little did we know that not only would the video kill the radio star, MTV would for the most part kill the music world as well. Maybe not at first, but as the popularity of the music video grew the quality of the music seemed to wane.

            When I was younger and first started listening to music there was very few media available to see the artist I enjoyed hearing. So when I was first exposed to MTV it was like a dream come true. Since there was not very many artists doing videos the pickings were slim and the rotation was small. But a couple of years in and MTV started broadcasting live music and the best thing that ever happened to music was happening right in front of my eyes.

            Then there was Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and Guns and Roses “November Rain” and the video took over the music. In 1975 Queen had the first video that was used to promote a song. “Bohemian Rhapsody” was the first official music video, and since then you could say its been all downhill since.

            People were more concerned with the video than with the quality of the music. There were several bands that could be consider “one hit” wonder because of the popularity of their video. Let me say this, in some regard if it was not for MTV I would not have been exposed to some and let me emphasize “some” music I would have just ignored had it not been because of the video.

            But the video became the story instead of the band. In the beginning you would be able to see the band perform the song (Though it may have just been lip-synched) you still saw the band. After the success of the two previous mentioned videos you hardly saw the performer. It was an interpretation of the song by the director. It just seemed that the music took a back seat to the graphics. Many a bands image was built by what you would see in the video and not hear on the audio. Because of that many bands would write a song with the idea of how they could make a video. They seemed to forget that a song was built out of the heart and soul of the writer, not the eyes of a director.

            Now it has been over 25 years since the video killed the radio star, and it seemed like the video killed itself, as the last I heard they don’t even play music videos on MTV anymore. Imagine that!     

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