N o one knows how to throw a party like MTV. So there must be quite a bash planned for today, celebrating 25 years on the air. Right?
Sorry. MTV is staying in tonight. There are no plans to even mention the birthday.
When your average viewer is 20 years old – too young to remember Martha Quinn, not even born when Madonna buckled on her “boy toy” belt – perhaps it’s wise not to mention you’re 25. MTV wants to be the perpetual adolescent.
On a relentless mission to stay hip, MTV casually discards generations. Yesterday, “Beavis and Butt-head.” Today, “Laguna Beach.”
And at each stop, MTV changes pop culture.
Without MTV, you might not have reality television. Commercials wouldn’t have vertigo-inducing quick cuts. And Kelly Osbourne wouldn’t have gotten near a recording studio.
Our birthday present is a look back at 25 memorable MTV moments:
1. THE DEBUT: Aug. 1, 1981. The first video? The slyly prophetic “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the now-forgotten Buggles. Only a few thousand people on a single cable system in northern New Jersey could see it. Within a few years, millions of kids demanded that their parents buy cable so they could see MTV. Along with CNN, it led TV’s transition out of the three-channel world. “This was the fuse that lit the cable explosion,” said Robert Thompson, professor of popular culture at Syracuse University.
2. BEAT IT: March 31, 1983. Michael Jackson becomes the first black artist with a video on MTV. The segregation was MTV’s early shame, ironic considering its later role in popularizing rap.
3. THRILLER: Dec. 2, 1983. Less a video than a 14-minute mini-movie with Vincent Price, ghouls and goblins, the premiere of Jackson’s “Thriller” was an event. It was the apotheosis of the idea of music videos as an art form. With director John Landis involved, it also was proof that Hollywood’s finest weren’t looking down upon what are essentially promo clips.
4. MADONNA BUSTS OUT: Sept. 14, 1984. Performing “Like a Virgin” at the first Video Music Awards, Madonna popped out of a cake dressed in a wedding gown and writhed through her hit. At that moment, Madonna became a superstar, put the VMAs on the map and set an enduring tone.
5. MONEY FOR NOTHING: 1985. The Dire Straits song was about MTV, mocked MTV and became the band’s biggest hit because of MTV. It was one of the first videos to feature computer animation, and Sting made a clever cameo echoing his role in iconic “I want my MTV” ads. The rules for music stardom had changed. Being photogenic was now crucial; an eye-catching video made hits.
6. BYE-BYE VJs: Original video jock J.J. Jackson’s contract expired in 1985. Nina Blackwood followed him out the next year and so did Martha Quinn, breaking the hearts of countless teenage boys. Alan Hunter and Mark Goodman were next. Only Adam Curry lasted into the ’90s. MTV refused to follow its aging first fans, courting teens instead. It also realized that airing videos was a dead end and began aggressively developing other programming.
7. SPRING BREAK: March 21, 1985. College students who couldn’t make it south in person could turn on MTV to catch the party. Each year it returns, a drunken bash with young, firm, scantily clad bodies oozing with sweat and undulating to the music.
8. RAP BLASTS OFF: Aug. 6, 1986. It’s no coincidence that “Yo! MTV Raps!” premiered about the same time rap started becoming the dominant music form for young America. Hip white kids such as Rick Rubin or the Beastie Boys may have loved rap before, but “Yo! MTV Raps!” brought it into suburban living rooms.
9. PEE-WEE’S RETURN: Sept. 5, 1991. It was a hard fall for Pee-Wee Herman, from star of one of television’s most popular kids shows to a national punch line when an undercover officer saw him masturbating in an adult theater. Herman went undercover himself for more than a month until creeping out onstage at the opening of that year’s VMAs. “Heard any good jokes lately?” Herman asked, to howls of laughter.
10. ENTER GRUNGE: Sept. 29, 1991. Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video killed the hair metal scene and signaled the ascendancy of grunge. The images themselves were an arresting accent, with the tattooed cheerleaders and what seemed like an underwater pep rally in a dank gymnasium.
11. CLAPTON UNPLUGGED: March 11, 1992. Only the most desperate of fading 1980s bands – Nuclear Valdez, Squeeze, the Alarm – responded to MTV’s first requests to show off their acoustic chops. But fans responded to the intimacy, and stars soon lined up: Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen (who got nervous and insisted on an electric guitar) – and Eric Clapton, in his first performance since his son had died after falling from a skyscraper window. “Everybody who was there felt something special was going on,” said Van Toffler, president of MTV’s music services. Clapton had to be talked into releasing the show on CD, and it became his biggest-selling album.
12. BOXERS OR BRIEFS?: April 19, 1994. After two years in office, President Bill Clinton submitted to 90 minutes of questions on complex policy issues by 16- to 20-year-olds before a live MTV audience. Everything else was forgotten when 17-year-old Laetitia Thompson of Potomac, Md., asked: “Mr. President, the world’s dying to know. Is it boxers or briefs?” “Usually briefs,” the president replied, looking slightly nonplussed.
13. HEH-HEH. COOL: March 24, 1994. Who’d have thunk that “Beavis and Butt-head” would make the cover of Rolling Stone? When Toffler received a pilot tape of two adolescent cartoon characters playing baseball with a frog, he watched it nearly 100 times. “You have a feeling in your bones that there’s something different about it that’s unique and it will either flop miserably or succeed brilliantly.”
14. REALITY BITES: June 23, 1994. It’s hard to recall a time when setting up a group of strangers in a camera-filled home was a new idea. But the 1992 debut of “The Real World” “invented reality TV,” Thompson said. “It’s absolutely ground zero.” And the inclusion of Pedro Zamora, who was gay and soon to die of AIDS, did more to promote tolerance than hundreds of public service announcements.
15. FEEDBACK LOOP: April 14, 1998. Jesse Camp wins the first “I Wanna Be a VJ” contest. Stuck in a rut, MTV was searching for some way to make its audience feel connected to the network. The wild-haired, willfully outrageous Camp seemed sent from central casting, and it was the audience doing the casting.
16. TIMES SQUARE LIVE: Oct. 22, 1998. The Backstreet Boys shut down Times Square during a “Total Request Live” appearance. The ruckus cemented TRL’s role as pop culture’s home page, with Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears as king and queen of the new scene.
17. JIGGLE IT: Sept. 9, 1999. When Lil’ Kim presented a VMA showing a pasty-clad breast, Diana Ross couldn’t resist a playful fondle. Lucky Ross wasn’t there eight years earlier, when Prince performed wearing pants with the rear end cut out.
18. TIPSY: Oct. 1, 2000. Thinking about “Jackass” Johnny Knoxville getting tipped over in the port-a-potty still makes you hold your nose. Knoxville specialized in painful on-camera tricks, and “Jackass” quickly became MTV’s most popular show.
19. MARIAH’S MELTDOWN: July 19, 2001. No one knew quite how to react when Carey made a surprise appearance on “TRL” pushing an ice cream cart filled with Popsicles. A nervous Carson Daly tried to cut to commercial, but Carey wouldn’t stop talking. A week later Carey was hospitalized for “extreme exhaustion.”
20. $#@+!: March 5, 2002. Sharrrr-rronnnn! The first bleeped-out swear word on “The Osbournes” premiere was followed by 58 others. For a while, the foggy-headed rocker Ozzy Osbourne, his type-A wife and self-involved kids became America’s first family, if only for the sheer weirdness of their life. They wore thin, but not before Sharon got her own talk show, daughter Kelly got a recording contract and son Jack got a stint in rehab.
21. DOGGING EMINEM: Aug. 29, 2002. The rap star was in no mood to hear Triumph the Insult Comic Dog chew over his feud with Moby. So when approached by the puppet on the VMAs, Eminem delivered a sucker punch and then flew into a rage backstage. “He was really furious,” said MTV executive vice president Dave Sirulnick, “which was startling because here was this guy who built his career on dissing and dishing. And this was a puppet.”
22. ASHTON PUNKS JUSTIN: March 17, 2003. “Candid Camera” with an edge, the debut of Kutcher’s series “Punk’d” had a crew posing as the “Tax Enforcement Agency” seize Justin Timberlake’s possessions after saying he owed $900,000 in back taxes. The title is now ensconced in the popular lexicon.
23. CHICKEN OR TUNA?: Aug. 19, 2003. “Newlyweds” followed the telegenic Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey as they navigated marital bliss. They truly became famous when cameras caught Simpson confused about what was in a can of Chicken of the Sea. Presto! America had a new favorite dim blond.
24. THE KISS: Aug. 28, 2003. It was MTV’s idea to bring back Madonna for a reprise of “Like a Virgin” for the 20th video music awards, and MTV’s idea to pair her with Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. The open-mouthed kiss that she planted on the two young stars? That was pure Madonna, and it outranked Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley for most memorable kiss.
25. STEPHEN &LC: Nov. 26, 2004. Viewers were gripped by the love triangle on new MTV hit “Laguna Beach,” and partying on spring break in this episode temporarily cost Kristin her boyfriend. MTV’s original idea was a reality version of “Beverly Hills 90210,” but ended up being a reality ” O.C.” instead. The real-life soap opera breaks convention by unfolding slowly, with none of the reality TV cliches such as confessional interviews.
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