When MTV Launched way back on 1st August 1981, this was the first thing people saw:

This was the second:

The first music video ever aired on Music Television was – perhaps a tad optimistically, or perhaps out of some twisted hope – the 1979 Buggles hit Video Killed the Radio Star. For a long time I thought maybe The Buggles and MTV had a point, but increasingly I’m beginning to wonder if Queen may have been closer to the truth with the words “Radio […] you’ve yet to have your finest hour.”

I don’t know about the rest of you, but – at the risk of sounding like a cantankerous old git – I can’t stand music channels any more.  At the basest level it’s the lack of artistic imagination in most of the videos that really annoys me.  It’s always the same old misogynistic stripteases and booty-shakes plaguing our screens.  So when videos like THIS come along, it gives me a pang of excitement because creative directors and artists have, for a change, taken a bold leap and thought outside the proverbial box!  Not that the link I just posted was actually a commissioned video.  It was a fan-made YouTube clip that got the attention of the artist for all the right reasons.

It is, of course, undeniable that the advent of music video changed the ball-game for burgeoning musical acts: in the image conscious world of the 21st Century, the less-than-gorgeous struggle to break into the big bad world of popular music. The ever watchful eyes of the paparazzi and the same-same world of shallow music television have all but guaranteed that.

The emergence of The Voice – which is essentially (let’s not beat around the bush here) “The X Factor for people too old and ugly to win the X Factor” – is proof enough that, on the whole, the music industry would rather have us listening to beautiful, skinny, talentless artists than ugly ones we can’t posterise and plaster our walls with.  In fairness, however, the big shots of the music industry have only been pandering to our demands.  Susan Boyle aside, as a western populace we’ve chosen only the beautiful to make it big from our TV “talent” shows: Kelly CLarkson, Olly Murs, Alexandra Burke, One Direction, Jennifer Hudson, JLS, Cheryl Cole, Leona Lewis, Shayne Ward, Carrie Underwood… the list goes on and on.

As if all this wasn’t enough, the fact that our eyes have been glued to music television for over three decades means that we’ve come to expect our singers to dance and learn choreography in a way that I’m quite certain never concerned Nat King Cole or Louis Armstrong.  According to this week’s “newspapers”, if they can be called that, ‘His Holiness’ Simon Cowell has now demanded that next year’s X-Factor contestants “up their game” after what he allegedly referred to earlier this year as “The worst series in the show’s history”.

So, I imagine you’re probably thinking the ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’ argument is looking pretty strong right now, and wondering where this is all going, but I have a theory, and I want to test the water with it.

If you read my last post, you’ll be aware that the first albums I ever bought were by Guns ‘n’ Roses and Pink Floyd.  Neither of whom are particularly pretty bands, nor, for that matter, all that contemporary.  A glance at my music collection will indicate that I listen to a lot of music made before I was born.  I was raised in a house where Capital Gold was the radio station of choice.  Now I have Sky+ and DAB radio with hundreds of digital radio stations to choose from, covering every period in musical history: Gold, Absolute 80s, Absolute 90s, Absolute 00s, Classic, Classic Rock, Jazz and who knows what else.  As well as this I have my CD collection, my vinyl records and my iPod.  The music channels don’t even get a look in.

Now I’m sure few people feel quite as empty as I do when no music is playing, and by that measure, are less concerned with having a constant stream of music from every direction.  However, I’m quite certain that a cross section of my readership would show the majority listen to the radio in their car considerably more frequently than they ever switch on the music channels on their TV, or even, for that matter, trawl the interweb for music vids.  And I imagine, based on observation as a passenger rather than a driver for so many years, that the majority either channel hop to find a song they want to hear, or else have a favourite station they choose to listen to which plays a broad mix of music from the last half-century.  Popular choices in the UK tend to be stations like Heart, Magic, Radio One, Capital, Absolute or Kiss, dependent on the particular genre people are looking for.

It occurs to me that in the last few years we’ve seen a huge shift away from local stations and toward national ones.  I can listen to DJs from halfway across the country thanks to the wonder of modern technology.  I’m aware that DAB is taking off at a snail’s pace, but regardless, the stations are making the move with or without us, in a hope to reach broader audiences.  It really could revolutionise the radio industry, because logic dictates that as the big stations cast their nets ever wider, more people will listen.  

More importantly, in my opinion, the public will be able to choose not only what, but also who they listen to with much more discrimination and exactitude.  For my part, I’m very particular about the DJs I can tolerate, and my radio station choices are limited by that.  However, with the growth of digital radio the number of stations could theoretically multiply indefinitely, because digital radio isn’t limited in the way that analogue radio was – with radio-wave crossover and that irritating double layered mess that occurs when two stations are broadcasting on the same frequency.

As with digital television, there is the risk of huge numbers of shoddy channels emerging, with poor programming and cheap production values.  On the other hand, people actively want music repeats, and choice and diversity when they turn on the radio.  I want to be able to listen to a DJ broadcasting from John O’Groats if he or she is the best on the air.  I think in the case of radio, diversity can only be a very good thing.  And it’s coming.

It might be true that we’ve corrupted the music industry with our skin-deep superficiality, left with no more than what the prettiest among us can muster, but Freddie Mercury with his hideous overbite and chevron moustache will still be blasting on “through the eons and on and on”, in spite of the “Radio Caka, Radio Blah-blah”.  More importantly, just because MTV might be shite, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t incredible musicians still out there playing some amazing music, and though that music isn’t always played on the radio, the beauty of the impending radio boom is that maybe it will be sooner than you think!

In Queen’s immortal words: “Radio – someone still loves you!”

“Let’s hope you never leave old friend;
Like all good things, on you we depend.
So stick around ‘cos we might miss you
When we grow tired of all this visual.
You had your time – you had the power,
You’ve yet to have your finest hour…”

Queen – Radio Gaga