Video Killed the Radio Star: Why the 1980’s Were the Most Important Decade for Pop Music

Obviously the answer to the question posed in the title boils down to one acronym: MTV.

MTV changed so much about the way we consume music to this day. Although it no longer holds the cultural relevance it once did, its fingerprints are all over pop music- and music in general today.

Up until the 1980’s, there was no commercial point of making a music video. If you did, it was because you felt it was necessary to complement the music, not because you stood to gain something from it. This changed drastically with MTV. Artists were racing to make the most over-the-top music videos possible, and it produced incredibly interesting results. Videos for songs like Micheal Jackson’s “Thriller” and A-Ha’s “Take On Me” were so in-your-face that you couldn’t look away. MTV rivaled and eventually surpassed radio as America’s hit maker, and if you could get your video to air, you were bound to get massive exposure and a spike in sales.

MTV had something of a monopoly on music entertainment through the 80’s and 90’s, not by design, but by happenstance. However, with the internet coming into play in the late 90’s in terms of music sharing, MTV’s days on top of the totem pole were numbered. Posting videos to new services like YouTube became more economically viable, and its popularity continued to increase, bringing people away from MTV for their music content.

Although it does not have the same grip on the music industry that it does today, you have MTV to thank for the popularity of music videos to this day, and the entire era of music- some great and some not so much- that it created.