We Don't Want Our MTV

Okay, I know I'm officially the last person on the Internet to blog about Michael Jackson, but I really don't have much to say about the man himself. He was a tremendous talent, a mind-blowing dancer, and created some of the best pop music ever. Pretty much from "Off the Wall" through "Bad", there was nobody better. Yeah, he may have done some bad things, though nothing he was ever convicted for, and it bugs me that he took Paul McCartney's advice on investing in song publishing and outbid McCartney for HIS OWN Beatles songs.

But the thing about Michael that I really want to talk about is his status as the first big-time music video star. Michael had perfect timing; his arrival as a massive pop star coincided with the arrival of MTV. He was able to take videos from simple promotional device to art, and while it's true that bands had been making artistic visual pieces with their music since the 1960s (Pink Floyd, anyone?), Michael Jackson made art you could dance to. He made "pop art" not quite in the sense that Andy Warhol did, but with much more commercial response. So in the past couple weeks since Michael passed, we've heard and seen a lot about his music video mastery and how that was really part of what made him the King of Pop.

So it's kinda sad that it takes Michael Jackson dying to get people talking about music videos again. The fact is videos aren't on TV anymore. MTV, "Music Television" doesn't have much to do with music anymore. "TRL" is gone, done in last November in what may as well have been dubbed the funeral for the televised music video. Videos are not in themselves dead; bands and singers continue to pump them out, but your viewing options are limited. MTV and VH-1 might air videos for a few hours late at night or early in the morning every other day. MTV2 might throw in a one-hour block of rap videos amidst all of its reruns of old MTV shows. Fuse is the best for videos, but for most, this is on digital cable, which costs more money than basic.

Most people now go online to see music videos, which is better for them because of the aspect of control. Let's face it... we're the "Now" generation. We want everything now, and that's because for the most part, we can get it now, thanks to the Internet. When a thought pops into my head and I want to find more about a person or event or something like that, I go right to the old laptop and look it up. Instant gratification. The same is true with music videos. You like an artist and want to watch his/her video? Go right to YouTube. The only downside I see of that is the fact that you're going to YouTube for one of two reasons: 1) you already like the artist or band, or 2) it's a viral video you heard about. If it's a viral video, you might enjoy it once or twice, but then you never watch it again, and what are the odds you will then buy the song? This is just one more change brought on by the Internet.

I spent the last year doing my Masters thesis on music videos. I found that in most cases, people watching music videos aren't as likely to be interested in a previously unknown artist as people who just hear songs. Why? Because videos have become cliched. The boundaries have been pushed, the innovations have been made, and aside from the occasional video done with Legos or visual tricks of some kind, most videos fall into a template. If it's pop-punk, you feature the cute male lead singer and show an adoring crowd watching them play. If it's rap/R&B, you show scantily-clad women, diamonds, money, etc. This "Now" generation has one other aspect to it: they don't like fakes. They prefer solid live acts over studio creations; that's why "American Idol" is so popular. They don't like to be fooled and they like to know their favorites are genuine. Putting your favorite band into a cliched music video pretty much takes off "realness" points.

Back to MTV and VH-1 for a moment: it's one thing to dump music videos for shows about your favorite artists like "Cribs". But it's quite another to have all the shows be excuses for people who only seek attention for themselves to be able to get just that. I guess that appeals to certain people, but definitely not me. Yeah, I'm probably outside of the target demo for MTV now, but very few of the college-age subjects in my study approved either. Perhaps it's a rejection of MTV as a dispenser of fakeness. If that happens, oh well... it's not like MTV is a sacred TV cow that can't itself be rebelled against. While reality shows continue to exist, we need to have some sort of real competitive aspect going these days for them to have any kind of mass-appeal shelf life. I guess that's better than "Celebrity Rehab" being on CBS 5 nights a week. Then again, it is summer so our options are limited.

So the music video has certainly been de-emphasized, and maybe that just puts it back to what some prefer it would be: art. Let's face it, true art is never gonna be massively popular, and if the music video is fated to become just one of many methods to make a band popular, maybe the content of the videos themselves will go back to being artistic since the bands have nothing to lose. They know that those who like them because they are "sensitive artist" types will like that sort of thing. As for the commercial and promotional avenues now available to the music industry, well that's the rest of my thesis and you'll just have to wait until the book comes out...