At the risk of alienating those either too young or too old to have truly enjoyed the heyday of MTV, tonight we come to praise music videos, not to bury them.
(skip to the end, right below the Talking Heads, if you want to see what I’m asking y’all to post—which isn’t legally binding, mind you)
At the end of 2025, MTV shut down their music video programming, which had long ago run its course. But long before MTV, there were “soundies”—essentially musical performances recorded live and played on movie jukeboxes, such as Duke Ellington’s “Hot Chocolate”. The market for these dried up in the late 1940’s, thanks to the advent of television.
Nevertheless, these early music (proto-)videos continued to be made, though in lesser quantities, to be shown in theaters and other venues—e.g., The Animals’ “The House of the Rising Sun”
These videos (if we can call them that) were basically just “point a camera at the band”. As to who created the first TRUE music video, with actual artistic interpretation of some sort (beyond the music itself, of course), some point to Bob Dylan and “Subterranean Homesick Blues”
I, however, tend to agree with the majority, who credit Mike Nesmith (yes, that Mike Nesmith), whose video for his song “Rio”, produced in 1977, is generally recognized as the first music video as we know the term today.
After “Rio”, music videos hit the industry like a tidal wave, with some acts jumping whole-heartedly into the new medium. Devo chose to put their ENTIRE promotional budget for their debut album Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! into music videos, eschewing the traditional promotional avenues of the time. And then, only four short years after “Rio”, MTV was launched. I won’t go into the tremendous impact it made, or the influence it quickly came to wield—you either know it already, or don’t rightly care. My mom acquired cable in January, 1983 and MTV quickly became my go-to channel after school. First video I remember seeing:
Thompson Twins :: Lies
This one also quickly became a favorite, and was instrumental in elevating the band’s profile, even though it pre-dated MTV’s inception.
king Heads :: Once in a Lifetime
So tonight, please post your favorite music videos—they don’t have to be from the MTV era; as I said above, I don’t want to be exclusionary.
I’ll close (in reverse order) with the weekly reminder about band names and song titles, and a screenshot from the Simpsons ep guest-starring Phish.
Gentle reminder: Those on phones really appreciate it if you put the name of your selection in your comment along with your song; and people using screen readers need this in order to identify the video as well. You know how this works — Put your quarter in the slot and your song in the comments. This is your Saturday night jukebox and the party starts NOW~!
