MTV nonetheless exists. Not less than, it nonetheless exists within the United States, or in certain of that counstrive’s markets, in the interim. A flurry of premature obituaries currently blew via the interweb after the announcement that the onlinework had shut down in other components of the world, Europe included. However even there, some expressed the sentiment that MTV had already died lengthy earlier than. And certainly, within the U.S., the place it originally launched, asking who remembers when MTV actually used to play music movies has been a common lament for many years, aired even by generations too younger to remember these days themselves. However members of any generation can now relive them — or reside them for the primary time — via a brand new website referred to as MTV Rewind.
The primary music video that greets the visitor is The Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star,” and appropriately so, because it inaugurated MTV itself when it went reside on August 1st, 1981. What follows are all the remainder of the movies performed on that first day, like Phil Collins’ “Within the Air Tonight,” Blondie’s “Rapture,” David Bowie’s “Boys Maintain Swinging,” and Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights.”
(Other, much less hugely remembered entries embody no fewer than three songs by Cliff Richard, which speaks to the then-incomplete formation of the type of pop-musical culture we nonetheless associate with MTV.) The positioning’s other playlists recreate other eras and genre-specific professionalgrams, from 120 Minutes to Whole Request Stay, Headbanger’s Ball to Yo! MTV Raps.
Curhirely, MTV Rewind’s music video rely involves about 40,000, sufficient to make sure any former addict of the onlinework a stream of nostalgia hits. However the website’s creator (a 43-year-old American resident in Albania, according to the New York Occasions, recognized pseudonymously as “Flex”) has additionally incorporated vintage station IDs and commercials, lots of them liable to trigger downproper Proustian sensations in the correct viewer. What could really feel refreshing even to curious youthful visitors is that, whichever channel they select, the following video that performs is determined not by an algorithm trying to predict their personal tastes. Fairly, every playlist is formed by the popular culture of a particular period, with sufficient left-field selections to maintain it interesting: simply the type of factor in hopes of which we used to flip over to MTV, again when the concept of streaming video on our computers nonetheless sounded like sheerest fantasy. Enter MTV Rewind right here.
Related Content:
Watch the First 2+ Hours of MTV’s Inaugural Broadsolid (August 1, 1981)
All of the Music Performed on MTV’s 120 Minutes: A 2,500-Video Youtube Playlist
The 50 Niceest Music Movies of All Time, Ranked by AV Membership
Revisit Pop-Up Video: The VH1 Collection That Reinvented Music Movies & Pop Culture
Primarily based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. He’s the writer of the newsletter Books on Cities in addition to the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Summarizing Korea) and Korean Newtro. Follow him on the social webwork formerly often called Twitter at @colinmarshall.
