MTV to Start Playing Music Videos

Curiously enough, they didn't publicize it themselves. I had to find *gasp* other media to tell the story!

Anyway, it was bound to happen--you can only exhaust reality shows for so long before going back to basics. The Real World: Brooklyn is old-school, early '90s edition, Unplugged will again be on the airwaves and Vh1 is bringing back Behind the Music. Now if only they can resurrect Pop Up Video...I'm telling you, it'll be gold. Gold!

The videos are early morning--starting very early, but meant to put a small dent in the GMAs of the world, perfect to wake up to or watch while you get dressed. With a 3 am start time, it's a new benchmark of insomnia.

What's more interesting is how this new video block will be exempt from ratings. Ratings for music videos as a whole are silly; it's the aggregate or the popularity of a given video/artist that's more important, similarly to this point made by Brian Stetler regarding cable news numbers. MTV plans to use the block now as an experiment in terms of advertising and marketing, possibly having one or few advertisers sponsor the whole thing, like what Hulu and other online video portals do. They'll also integrate the videos and Unplugged segments more, hoping for a greater awareness of the product (music). I hope they continue to show videos while credits run, though I can see them phasing this out now that they'll actually be able to play the whole thing.

And be on the lookout for Asher Roth. He's poised to be the Big Thing this year: a mix of Eminem and Mickey Avalon with the cheekiness of Travis McCoy.

On End-of-the-Year Countdowns

In another sign of I’m getting old, the number one song on Z100’s Top 100 Countdown of 2008 is Chris Brown’s “Forever”, and for the first time, I could not conjure up the song in my head. While I’m familiar with many Chris Brown tracks—“Kiss Kiss”, “With You”, "Run It", “Wall-to-Wall”, his duet with girlfriend Rihanna “Hate that I Love You”, “No Air” with Jordin Sparks—I had no clue about this “Forever”. I was mystified. The number one song according to the Top 40 station in one of the biggest cities in the world and I do not recognize it? What?

So I looked up the song online, and yep, I don’t know the song. Ok, maybe I’ve heard it once or twice (though I see how it became the jingle for Doublemint gum, though because I rarely watch TV now, I don’t know the commercial), but it doesn’t ring familiar at all. Strange…Oh. Wait. I do vaguely recognize the opening chords, but that was a signal for me to skip it. Okay then.

I’m beyond getting mad at countdown crap like this. I realized, wading through the list, that I listen to so many stations and because I purposely skip over songs and artists I don’t like (I think I’ve managed to not hear either of Leona Lewis’s singles in their entirety, a feat I’m proud of), my perceptions of what is popular and what is not is somewhat skewed. I used to try to guess what the number one song of the year would be, trying to nail it earlier and earlier in the year. A number one song has to hit its peak at the right time of the year, in a certain time of July/August, be inescapable, yet not annoying, and not a fad. I also realized that I had to tailor my guesses to the individual outlets—VH1’s top songs were not mutually identical with PLJ’s, even though they overlapped a lot. But I’ve consistently fallen short, with my guesses coming up in the second (or fifth) spots. This year, I considered (frightfully) Leona Lewis’s “Bleeding Love”, since avoiding it became an Olympic sport (alas, number one for VH1), and Rihanna’s “Don’t Stop the Music”, since that music never stopped for several months. Do not underestimate staying power.

I checked out some other stations that did countdowns. The lovely thing about the internet is now I can just read their lists; Z100 thankfully put theirs up before all the airings were done, so you don’t even have to listen to the whole countdown! (Which, as we all know, drags on and on in the 60-80 range.) Obviously Lil Wayne, Rihanna and Chris Brown rule in terms of singles and even cross genres; if the New York metropolitan region had a country station, the same would be said for Taylor Swift, who I think does much better in all genres outside of this region. The ubiquitous (and best sing-along chorus of the year) “Low” actually came out late in 2007, or else it would have undoubtedly been #1.

The problem with countdowns is I have never understood how they figure out what song places where. You can argue relative placement (and I have), but even that strange mix of sales figures and airplay does nothing for me. I remember “Sorry” being pretty damn big, a lot bigger than #98, which is a spot reserved for songs you heard once back in May, or a song that was released December 1^st, but somehow that doesn’t register. I guess I just made sure to crank up that tune whenever it was on VH1. There were many other “huhs?” when skimming through the list--“Hot N Cold” is a bigger hit that “I Kissed a Girl”?—as well as good half-dozen or so songs about which I just had no clue. When I didn’t listen to a station for a week or so, or ignored FM radio for several days on end, I just felt so behind, even if day-to-day, even week-to-week, playlists don’t change that much. But then one day you realize that you haven’t heard Sara Bareilles’ “Love Song” in a while, and that that song has already peaked. And then you’re kind of sad, because you really liked that song.

Flashback Time, Part II

It was inevitable.

Last week VH1 aired “I Love the New Millennium,” the most recent entry in their extremely popular and channel-defining “I Love” series. They’ve done three versions of the eighties, two versions of the nineties and two on the seventies (when most of the people involved and a good chunk of the audience weren’t even alive), and specials on toys and the holidays, for the kid inside of us. Obviously there will be an “I Love the New Millennium: Version 2.0” in the future, hopefully in 2010 when they can finish the decade.

VH1 pioneered what is now known as “instant nostalgia”, a term that was thrown around a lot around the time "Best Week Ever" premiered in 2004, with their recaps of the week. Back then it seemed daring, yet kind of glaringly obvious (and for some, a sign of the apocalypse). It was also good (or at least it seemed like it). Now it’s random, low-level actors and comedians jumping in for a quick joke, usually nothing better than what your mom would say. Nowadays, instant nostalgia is a permanent fixation of blogs and a certain type of entertainment media, looking back on what just happened—or what will happen. It’s also a classic oxymoron. Did George Carlin ever do a riff on this?

But VH1 already knows the criticisms of doing a series on looking back on a decade that hasn’t even ended yet, and addresses them in the first line of the first episode: “You think it’s too soon to celebrate the new millennium?” But they know we don’t care. Reliving pop culture is fun—it’s fluffy shared experiences, finding out you share the same opinion as Dee Snider. If you love this stuff (and I do), it dissipates as soon as the clips come in. "Survivor"! Scooters! 2000!

Like the previous version, “I Love the New Millennium” has catchy graphics and a snazzy title sequence, plus the appropriate slang (fo’ shizzle, nice) as interstitials. Interestingly, the format is credited to the BBC. What does that mean? That each “story” is introduced by a video clip and then comedians explaining and joking on it was pioneered by those serious misters of news? Or that they invented the technique of each segment being framed by little one-offs to encapsulate other trivia bits from those years? It’s a very high-minded co-opt.

Despite that, as the series continues it loses some of the fun, because it’s less about nostalgia and more about reliving embarrassing stories that need to stay buried. I don’t recall 2005 being a particularly lame year, pop-culture wise (but who really remembers nowadays?), but that ep’s a clunker. Maybe it was just my excitation taking over, but 2000 was spot-on—though I expected a bit on the “Thong Song”, but it was nicely appropriated as the “hot girls of the decade” segment, although the lists got lamer as the decade got longer. (Jenna Fischer was named in the 2006 edition though, a big surprise).

One of the biggest missteps the show made was in its use of music. It’s beyond obvious that a series like this would only use songs that appeared in that particular year in that segment; at least use songs that were big in the decade, since most people couldn’t pinpoint a song down to its exact timetable. But not only does the show fail in this, but it reuses songs to the point that they become meaningless. Britney Spears’ “(You Drive Me) Crazy”—which charted in 1999—was used in every single episode, to describe something particularly “crazy” that a celebrity or notorious individual did (see: Imus, Mel Gibson). How about a far-better and bigger “Crazy” to illustrate this point: Gnarls Barkley’s 2006 megahit? I guess Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo didn’t want to dilute its potency.

The “Then and Now” segment is a particular waste: In the eighties original, Weird Al compared prices and other contextual clues to show how different things really were. Here, we have Taylor Dayne (who has absolutely no relevance to the current decade—she had a few hits in the eighties and is trying to make a comeback now) saying dumb stuff like “Bobby Brown had a career 20 years ago. Now he just berates Whitney Houston on “Being Bobby Brown”.” Not as cool as hearing how much a Harvard education costs twenty years ago.

I thought the “Liars” segment was particularly novel, pointing out that in this decade we have a serious issue with truth-telling. (Ooh, tying it into the Bush Administration!) Perez Hilton’s inclusion is pointless most years, but the time capsule has its moments. Moby narrates the segment on biggest hits of the year, but he show absolutely no enthusiasm, and I find his confession that he’s never heard of Michelle Branch odd. Again, as the years continue the iPod selections are off-base, whereas 2000 brings me immediately back to high school.

One of the hallmarks of this series is that it features many of the same commentators: Rich Eisen, Stuart Scott, Scott Ian, Michael Ian Black, Chris Jericho. But at this point in the game they can—and do—talk about earlier installments. It’s unnecessary, pretentious, and only interesting to see Hal Sparks’ hair styles. It wastes precious time—so much has happened that’s not VH1 related, and one day they can do “I Love VH1” and get all those cracks in.

Particularly since the show is discussing recent topics, it’s easy to point out what is missing: “Crazy in Love”, the Wii, "The Colbert Report". Apparently a lot of actors didn’t give their permission to show clips, and many other properties were just too expensive. Where was "Superbad" and "Knocked Up", "Grey’s Anatomy" and "Lost"? Some phenomenons that extended over years—or took time to build, like "24" and "Lord of the Rings"—are encapsulated in a particular year. Sometimes mentions were cursory, as a way to include something on the list, like "Brokeback Mountain". The video blogs (and the extras on the web) are meant to include everything they couldn’t show online, although most of them I’m sure are utterly boring. A sizable portion of what they include is questionable: “Fat Actress”, Enrique Iglesias and “Hero”, Andrew W.K. and The Darkness (neither were as big as Soulja Boy), “Stupid Girls”, Bill O’Reilly’s sexual harassment lawsuit…YouTube didn’t really hit big until 2006 (that’s when it was featured on Time’s “Person of the Year” cover) and Ok Go’s “Here It Goes Again" wasn’t even released until 2006, not 2005, when both of these were included.

One of the challenges VH1 faces is not only how to make the series work, especially in the later years when popular acts like Amy Winehouse are still in the news largely for the same reasons they’ve always been in, but to point out the enduring social and cultural forces that defined the decade. I think the Liars segment succeeds, but the increasing tabloid focus manages both to point out that in some ways that could be one enduring legacy of this decade—a depressing thought—but also that VH1 just didn’t give themselves enough time or resources to do the show properly.

Everyone will joke that there’s no excuse for this show, as all VH1 needs to do is repackage and reedit "Best Week Ever" (or rather, what becomes of it—"Best Year Ever"). But the point of doing this, the point of real nostalgia, is to give perspective on what’s occurred…which sometimes doesn’t work. But premiering the show now doesn’t need to signal that VH1 is desperate for a hit: With a new president in office next year, a part of this decade is ending. The ‘00s are defined by Bushisms—one appears at the first commercial break in every episode—and many of the things discussed in the show relate back to some Bush-era mistake. Will pop culture be as defined by a new president as it has been with the current one? If “I Have a Crush on Obama” is any indication, there might be change in the air, but only in that politics and pop culture will mingle far more than they used to.