“The 1980's - I Want MY MTV”

1. Reactions to mainstream pop in the 1970's
   1. In the 1970's, the MOR artists captured the largest segment of the market.
      1. The Carpenters ("Close to You," 1970), Barry Manilow (This One's For You, 1976, Barry Manilow Live, 1977, and Even Now, 1978, each of which sold over 3 million copies), and Neil Diamond (who had 36 Top Forty hits and 20 gold and platinum albums between 1970 & 1986) typified mainstream pop.
      2. The most popular singles in the middle of the decade were "The Way We Were" (Barbra Steisand), "Love Will Keep Us Together" (Captain & Tennille), and "Silly Love Songs" (Paul McCartney & Wings). A few artists - Billy Joel, Elton John, Fleetwood Mac, and Steely Dan, for example - added some spice to the mainstream.
      3. Pop rockers were only slightly more adventurous.
   2. Two styles in the rock continuum, although initially peripheral to the mainstream, helped shake the music out of its mold, at least for a while - disco and punk.
      1. From a production viewpoint, disco was "smooth, sleek, and sensual," and technologically sophisticated. Punk, on the other hand, was "dense, discordant, defiant," attempting to deconstruct rock 'n' roll.
      2. Disco was originally associated with African Americans; punk attempted to portray the brutality of the white urban culture, and much of the music was arguably racist.
      3. Disco enabled "black artists [to] conquer the pop charts in a way that they never did even during the height of rhythm and blues" (Abe Peck, quoted in Garofalo)
   3. The success of artists such as Alice Cooper and Kiss prompted others to test the limits of cultural tolerance; although somewhat short-lived, "glam" or "glitter" rock's challenge to traditional gender roles has become in some ways a legacy of the decade.
   4. "New Wave," a non-racist and somewhat less political version of punk, emerged in the late 1970's and continued to be popular in the 1980's. Among the most popular were Elvis Costello and the Police.
2. Confusion at the beginning of the 1980's
   1. The murder of John Lennon on 12/8/1980 damped any remaining vestiges of 1960's idealism.
   2. The election of Ronald Reagan as president signaled a change in the political climate.
   3. The collapse of disco under its own weight and new wave had evolved into a musical category so diverse as to be meaningless. The music industry, which had come to depend heavily on targeting audiences, suffered a major recession in 1979, its 1st in 30 years.
      1. Insiders had thought that the industry, which had seen such tremendous growth in the 70's, was recession-proof. However, sales between 1978 and 1979 declined by 11%.
      2. Within the first 5 months of the decline, 700 record-company employees lost their jobs, and CBS alone eliminated 7,000 positions worldwide between 1980 and 1986.
      3. More restricted production made it harder for new groups to break into the business.
      4. The record companies blamed home taping and piracy for the reduction in sales. It could also have been due to a less exciting period in music, a saturated market, and the failure of its own promotional abilities.
3. The Rise of Music Television
   1. The introduction of the VCR for the home in the late 1970s suggested a possible outlet for music videos, and advances in satellite transmission in the early 1980s made possible instantaneous worldwide transmission of live and taped events and other broadcasts.
   2. Deregulation of the television industry in the early 1980s made facillitated the expansion of cable services and an increase in the number of available channels.
   3. The music industry had long recognised the the impact of the visual elements of a performance, particularly in pop music.
      1. Music performance is at least partly a visual experience ("Are you going to see the concert?").
      2. Filmed performances had been produced for various artists since at least the 1940s.
      3. Appearances as guest artists on variety shows, American Bandstand, and weekly series such as The Monkees, The Archies, and The Partridge Family demonstrated the potential for the success of music television.
      4. The 1975 film clip for Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" is possibly the "modern" music video.
   4. On August 1, 1981, Warner Bros. (and American Express) launched MTV, the first 24-hour music video cable channel. According to the vice president of marketing, Marshall Cohen, it was "the most researched channel in history," and it is arguably the most powerful musical outlet developed to date.
      1. The music industry was initially cautious about videos. They are relatively expensive to produce, and they have never become consumer commodities the way that records, tapes, and CDs have.
      2. Music videos generate interest in the music, which translates into sales of other products. Also, on a channel like MTV they deliver an audience to advertisers.
      3. The Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star" was the first video to premire on MTV. It was also the millionth video to air on the network (February 27, 2000) and the third most aired video in MTV history. "Sledgehammer" by Peter Gabriel's is number one.
      4. Early MTV went through 3 distinct phases:
         1. 1981 to 1983, it was characterized by an almost continuous flow of music, interupted only by advertisements and occasional comments by "VJs" (visual AOR)
         2. 1983 to 85, MTV became available in New York & Los Angeles. It made a major committment to heavy metal and began to air "performance clips" that showed the artists' interaction with their audience and the audience response. A number of new video outlets appeared, filling some of the programming gaps. BET and and TNN were fulltime channels, and several networks created incorporated shows into their programming, including Night Flight (USA), Night Tracks (WTBS), Friday Night Videos (NBC), and Hot Tracks (ABC). MTV kept its lead by obtaining exclusivity arrangements with several major record companies, giving them exclusive broadcast rights to certain videos for 1 month in exchange for cash payments of hundreds of thousands per year.
         3. The third period was marked by a broadening of scope and a focus on a more youthful audience. VH-1 was created for the age 25 to 54 audience.
      5. Music videos have typically been considered a form of promotion, and producers and directors are often drawn from advertising. This has resulted in what might be called the "MTV look" - fast cuts, constantly changing angles of view, and special effects.
      6. MTV was accused of being racist, which they countered by suggesting that few black artists recorded the kind of music that MTV featured (certainly a circular argument - their playlist resulted from demographic studies of a predominantly white audience). A particularly blatant example of racial exclusion was MTV's rejection of 5 Rick James videos even though Street Songs had sold over 4 million copies. At the time, they were playing Prince's "Little Red Corvette."
4. Michael Jackson - 1st of the 1980s superstars - Michael Jackson's Thriller recording was number 1 for 37 weeks in 1983, and it generated an unprecedented 7 Top Ten singles. It also received 12 Grammy Awards - 8 for Jackson and 4 for producer Quincy Jones. At first, MTV resisted airing videos from Thriller, but its overwhelming popularity and possibly some pressure from CBS (who, according to rumor, had threatened to pull all of its videos unless the Jackson videos were aired) eventually pushed them to show "Billie Jean" and "Beat It."
5. Other Superstars of the 1980s
   1. 1984 was the year for Prince.
   2. 1985 - Bruce Springsteen and Born in the USA, Whitney Houston
   3. Lionel Ritchies' Can't Slow Down would have been the talk of the industry had it not been overshadowed by Thriller.
   4. Madonna had 12 Top Ten hits in a row between 1984 and 1987; nine of them came from the albums Like A Virgin and True Blue.
   5. Other 1980s suprestars include Phil Collins, Huey Lewis and the News, the Pointer Sisters, Janet Jackson, and Anita Baker.
6. Charity Events
   1. Bob Geldof's "Do They Know It's Christmas?" and Band-Aid
   2. "We Are the World"
   3. Live-Aid, Farm-Aid
7. Other currents
   1. Rap & Hip-Hop
   2. Heavy Metal

   "In the 1980s, albums were carefully constructed repositories of quality material, designed not as single conceptual wholes like Sgt. Pepper but as time-release capsules, with individual cuts marketed to the public at precise moments, not to sell the single itself - singles had become largely promotional by this point - but to keep the album in circulation for months." (Garofalo, p. 371)

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