Memorable MTV Videos

[roadman65]

Remember when MTV did actually mean Music Television and actually showed umm uh Music Videos?  What were your most memorable videos?

Mine were  as follows:

Yes Leave It: With its initial upside videos with the band standing against a white back drop having over 20 (I think) different versions of it.

Alan Parsons: Don't Answer Me: With its cheezy comic book cartoon cliche love story of a man with a broken heart rescuing his crush from a man who has going all the way on his mind with the lady.

Rush Countdown: The video showed the first Space Shuttle Launch as seen by its band members from a VIP viewing area.

Lou Reed No Money Down:  The video was gross and disgusting by many as it featured Lou Reed pulling the skin off his face and exposing his skeleton after he was finished.

ZZ Top Legs:  It was about a girl who got  teased and ridiculed by obnoxious men at a local hangout for being nerdy, who later got a makeover from a trio of ladies who then came back to the place she was teased and picked up the one man who did not bother her and both drove off together.

The Cars Magic: Where Ric Ocasic of the Cars walked on water when in reality he as walking on plexiglass arranged under the water.

The Grateful Dead Hell In A Bucket:  Jerry Garcia sitting at a bar while jamming away on his guitar was a classic picture moment.

What were yours?

[Max Rockatansky]

Probably this since I remember when MTV came on the air:

That or anything MTV would show related to Michael Jackson or something Beavis & Butthead would commentate on.

[Max Rockatansky]

This was pretty IT when it first aired on MTV and I don't think really has been topped to this day:

I've heard a lot of people say Smooth Criminal is better but that was something you had to suffer mainly through Moonwalker for back in the late 80s...  As freakish as Michael Jackson turned out to be it's probably hard for anyone who grew up in the 90s onward to believe how big he really was back then.  My brother even had the red jacket from the video....asked for it exclusively for his birthday one year.  You'd think he'd be the biggest dork in school but that thing was the shit in it's time.    Hard not to roll your eyes when he says "I'm not like other guys" to that girl in the beginning then transforms into the werewolf. 

[Roadrunner75]

Best bank robbery video:

[amroad17]

A-ha's "Take On Me".  At the time, a cutting edge video which intertwined reality with drawn images.

I liked Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer."  My wife cannot stand it.

Of course, the video that will always be considered the best ever is "Thriller",  the "Gone With The Wind" of all music videos.

[bandit957]

I thought the video for "Vox Humana" by Kenny Loggins was HILARIOUS!!! I BURST OUT LAUGHING when I first saw it!!!

[bandit957]

Alan Parsons: Don't Answer Me: With its cheezy comic book cartoon cliche love story of a man with a broken heart rescuing his crush from a man who has going all the way on his mind with the lady.

I remember when I used to think the lyrics to the song went, "Ronald Reagan hides from everyone."

[7/8]

I personally like this video, "Pop Goes the World" by Men Without Hats

It has a baby playing the synthesizer, Bonhomme, and an Elvis impersonator. What's not to like?

[Desert Man]

There was a time parents would allow their children in the 1980s to watch MTV when indeed was a 24/7 music video channel. I was...could remember a high number of music videos in a tender age range 4-7. Then VH1 came on and my parents recommended that to me instead of controversial MTV said to became age-inappropriate or not child-friendly.

As a young child, I was able to locate where this music video was filmed on location: the Palm Springs area or the Coachella valley. Tears for Fears "Everybody wants to rule the World" (circa 1984). From the dinosaur sculpture in Cabazon (also on Pee Wee's Big Time Adventure movie) way out west of Palm Springs to the Salton Sea 15 miles southeast of Coachella to Interstate 10 between the two places. I recognized scenes of the towns of Thermal, san Gorgonio and the sand dunes north of I-10.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OFOZQ6pMGo

[Max Rockatansky]

There was a time parents would allow their children in the 1980s to watch MTV when indeed was a 24/7 music video channel. I was...could remember a high number of music videos in a tender age range 4-7. Then VH1 came on and my parents recommended that to me instead of controversial MTV said to became age-inappropriate or not child-friendly.

As a young child, I was able to locate where this music video was filmed on location: the Palm Springs area or the Coachella valley. Tears for Fears "Everybody wants to rule the World" (circa 1984). From the dinosaur sculpture in Cabazon (also on Pee Wee's Big Time Adventure movie) way out west of Palm Springs to the Salton Sea 15 miles southeast of Coachella to Interstate 10 between the two places. I recognized scenes of the towns of Thermal, san Gorgonio and the sand dunes north of I-10.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OFOZQ6pMGo

Yes, there was a clandestine quality that my Mom in particular thought that I was there...the "brain rotting" type according to her words in the early 80s.  Of course this only increased the mystique of something that I wasn't supposed to watch, so whenever my parents left we would watch MTV with the volume low just in case they came back unexpectedly.    A lot of things in the 80s had that similar "brain rot" quality too them; too much Nintendo and the Simpsons come to mind.  Of course by 1989 when you tell someone who is approaching adulthood that something on TV rots their brain you tend to call that crap out for what it was....god those early Simpsons shows were tame.  All I remember about VH1 back in those days is that they showed all the vanilla songs my parents liked.

[TravelingBethelite]

One of my favorite songs ever.

[bandit957]

What I didn't understand was how some adults thought MTV was "dirty" or "satanic" yet they tolerated radio stations that played the same music. They thought music only became "dirty" or "satanic" if you added video to it. It didn't matter what was in the video. This is also why our local cable system didn't pick up MTV until almost 2 years after it was founded.

Also, something else about music videos: Back when I was about 10, right after MTV first came to town, I came up with my own idea for a music video. The video would have a brief scene lasting a few seconds that would feature the head of Bert from 'Sesame Street' slowly rotating, with his mouth open. It would be shown at an angle above his head. This scene would have nothing to do with the song. If I had a Bert puppet, I'd make a YouTube video that shows what I mean.

[bandit957]

All I remember about VH1 back in those days is that they showed all the vanilla songs my parents liked.

I remember VH1 showing mostly pretentious crap. This was in the late '80s/early '90s. Most of the videos they showed were for people who thought they were smarter and more sophisticated than everyone else.

[jp the roadgeek]

I remember when MTV thought many parts of this video were inappropriate and edited it down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVOuYquXuuc

[bandit957]

I remember when MTV thought many parts of this video were inappropriate and edited it down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVOuYquXuuc

How is this "inappropriate"? The scenes they cut out were mostly just animals and cityscapes. I thought they edited it because it was too long.

[Max Rockatansky]

What I didn't understand was how some adults thought MTV was "dirty" or "satanic" yet they tolerated radio stations that played the same music. They thought music only became "dirty" or "satanic" if you added video to it. It didn't matter what was in the video. This is also why our local cable system didn't pick up MTV until almost 2 years after it was founded.

Also, something else about music videos: Back when I was about 10, right after MTV first came to town, I came up with my own idea for a music video. The video would have a brief scene lasting a few seconds that would feature the head of Bert from 'Sesame Street' slowly rotating, with his mouth open. It would be shown at an angle above his head. This scene would have nothing to do with the song. If I had a Bert puppet, I'd make a YouTube video that shows what I mean.

Because it was "edgy" for it's time. lol  Basically it was what people in the early 80s considered to be unwholesome which was pretty laughable considering what a lot of adults at the time were doing with drugs in the 60s....or some of the more questionable things in popular culture in the 70s.  Basically this comes up every once in awhile for some new form of media.  In the 90s there was kind of a similar backlash to early Internet when it was largely chat room based.  Video games were supposedly warping the youth of America with the Night Traps, Mortal Kombats and Dooms of the world.  Hell wasn't there something about Starbucks having just red holiday cups instead of X-mas cups last year that had people freaking out?

[bandit957]

Before MTV came to town, the main venue where I saw music videos was Casey Kasem's TV show 'America's Top 10'. Anyone else remember this show? It was on regular over-the-air TV. The first time I saw it was when my grandfather watched it. Back then, the show usually consisted of Casey briefly counting down the week's top 10 songs, followed by a video or maybe an interview. I know this show is the first place I saw Mellencamp's "Jack And Diane" video.

[SidS1045]

And, of course, there's the "inventors" of MTV, 15 years before MTV debuted...

https://www.youtube.com/embed/lICpC2GoHjg

[Max Rockatansky]

Before MTV came to town, the main venue where I saw music videos was Casey Kasem's TV show 'America's Top 10'. Anyone else remember this show? It was on regular over-the-air TV. The first time I saw it was when my grandfather watched it. Back then, the show usually consisted of Casey briefly counting down the week's top 10 songs, followed by a video or maybe an interview. I know this show is the first place I saw Mellencamp's "Jack And Diane" video.

I remember watching it when it was on TV, I want to say it was on Saturday morning?  I had idea the guy was even alive until I heard about that whole weird thing where his family basically held him as a prisoner leading up to his death in 2014...weird as all hell.

[BamaZeus]

My grandfather wasn't exactly a big fan of pop music, in fact his car radio was perpetually tuned to the classical music station.

My father, aunt, and uncle bought him a subscription to cable tv for a year as a birthday gift, since cable was new to his town.  He finally discovered MTV on his own and thought the Grateful Dead "Touch of Grey" video with the dancing skeletons was about the greatest thing he had seen in his life.

[texaskdog]

Probably this since I remember when MTV came on the air:

That or anything MTV would show related to Michael Jackson or something Beavis & Butthead would commentate on.

Just realized I've never seen this.  Then the Buggles joined prog rock band Yes....

[Roadrunner75]

Before MTV came to town, the main venue where I saw music videos was Casey Kasem's TV show 'America's Top 10'. Anyone else remember this show? It was on regular over-the-air TV. The first time I saw it was when my grandfather watched it. Back then, the show usually consisted of Casey briefly counting down the week's top 10 songs, followed by a video or maybe an interview. I know this show is the first place I saw Mellencamp's "Jack And Diane" video.

I remember that, and growing up without cable, I also watched "Friday Night Videos", something called "Videospin" on PBS for awhile and the occasional random videos they used to fill time when a movie ended early on a local UHF channel.

[bandit957]

It seems like the TV show 'Solid Gold' occasionally included music videos too. But I think mostly 'Solid Gold' made their own videos. I seem to remember they made their own video for a Lionel Richie song (it might have been "My Love") that just showed a bunch of still photos of Lionel Richie's face filling the screen.

[texaskdog]

Friday Night Videos was awesome, especially the one hosted by Hulk Hogan and Vince McMahon in 1986, the last year pop music was good.

[7/8]

The video for "Magic" by The Cars has the lead singer walking on water

I also enjoy all the 80's clothes and hair too