![]() ![]() New wave was optimism, colour, escapism, and running a million miles an hour from reality.” New wave and the great synthesiser explosion, everybody wanted to forget the previous five years. “Punk,” he said, by contrast, “was pain and spitting and swearing. One Christopher Hamill, later known as Limahl of Kajagoogoo, acknowledged that MTV could have been specifically designed for the peacocks and fashionistas of new romantic and synthpop and their shared flight into fantasy. Rhodes was far from the only one who immediately seized the opportunities provided by MTV, seeing it as the ideal vehicle for the new sounds of a young generation of musicians – or rather, non-musicians. “Video to us is like stereo was to Pink Floyd,” he reflected in 1984. “I think videos have certainly worked to our advantage,” said Duran keyboardist Nick Rhodes, who found the medium perfect for capturing his androgynous prettiness. Après ABC, le déluge: throughout late 19, a slew of new (and sometimes not-so-new but cognisant and adaptable) acts emerged for whom the video was the natural milieu: Adam And The Ants, Bow Wow Wow, The Police, Madness, and most videogenic of all, Duran Duran. ![]() Influenced by funk and disco, James Brown and Chic, they could see a change coming in the guise of ‘new pop’. As they famously declared: “We’re through with matt, and into gloss.” Just as the creators of MTV at their New York HQ were envisioning a vibrant, more visual future for pop, in Sheffield the urge to shift from dour grey to colour was being felt by purveyors of electro noise Vice Versa, then in the process of metamorphosing into ABC. Like-minded people across the globe were having similar thoughts. But already, by the end of 1980, you could tell there was a desire for something different again, something more glamorous and flamboyant. ![]() The fast-moving British music scene saw punk cede to post-punk and the dark, forbidding experimental sounds of Joy Division, PiL, Gang Of Four, Wire and their peers. ![]() The success of the sort of stars written about in these pages – ABC, Adam Ant, Culture Club, Duran Duran, Eurythmics, The Human League, Spandau Ballet – would have been unthinkable without the cable and satellite channel formerly known as Music Television, certainly in the US, where it was launched on 1 August 1981. MTV may not have given birth to the pop video – everyone from The Beatles to Bowie, The Rolling Stones to Queen can lay claim to producing pioneering music clips before it – but it helped make it the pre-eminent music format of 80s pop’s golden age, one every bit as valid as the single and album.Īnd it couldn’t have better suited the artists of the day. Paul Lester celebrates the 24/7 pop escapism of MTV’s glory days – when music videos ruled the world… ![]()
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