Soundbreaking: Stories from the Cutting Edge of Recorded Music (TV Mini Series) Sound and Vision (2016) User Reviews

Video Killed the Radio Star

[Hitchcoc · 10/10 · 12 January 2017]

I really enjoyed this offering. It tells of the rise of MTV and how music left the one dimension and gave us visual interpretations of songs. I was really surprised to see the evolution of the medium. For one thing, when the concept of music videos came along, there just weren't enough of them to fill up the time. They pointed out that Rod Stewart was way ahead of the game and he did them on the cheap. Usually, it was just him, sitting in a chair or on a stool, playing his music. There were a few props and, perhaps, an attractive woman. But by filling up the time, he gave himself a huge boost in popularity. It also tell about the difficulty of black performers getting time on MTV. Michael Jackson and a potential withdrawal of all artists by his label put an end to that. Soon, the creativity of the videos was just as important as the music itself. Tom Petty hated these things because he felt that the single interpretation of a song takes away the main feature of art, where we put our own slant on what we hear. There is also a really sexy look at Beyoncé and her role in visual music.