Quote:
Originally Posted by redbird
The ‘80s brought an unabashed and proudly apartheid moment in music. MTV entrenched itself. Music was to be seen and not heard. Artists that looked more carnival geek (hello, Joe Jackson) or over 30 (goodbye, Fleetwood Mac), no matter the beauty and intellect in notes and lyrics, found themselves the musical equivalent of a televangelist, stuck in the 3AM time slot, if their videos rotated at all—as was the case for black artists looking for purchase on MTV.
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The only problem is that that's not exactly true. Fleetwood Mac's videos got lots of play on MTV. "Little Lies" even topped the MTV video charts. It was an MTV special that brought the classic Fleetwood Mac back. Solo Stevie, Don Henley, Glen Frey, Tom Petty, the Traveling Wilburys, Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Genesis, etc, all were in heavy rotation.
As for black artists on MTV, I think "Thriller" is still considered the most successful video of all time. I watched a lot of MTV, and I never really thought they had a racial diversity deficit. Look at the mainstream success of hip hop. You don't think Yo! MTV Raps! had anything to do with that?
MTV can be partially blamed for the downfall of popular music to some extent, but I think MTV actually did more to narrow the racial divide in the culture of music than not.