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MTV and video games have solved that problem as far as most of humanity goes. That, and telly, as it were.” “Telly?” Who was that? He grunted in amusement. “Television, of course. Don’t you speak English?” “You sure don’t,” I muttered. Shaking his head, he frowned at me.
I was inspired by a lot of people when I was young. Every band that came through town, to the theater, or the dance hall. I was at every dance, every night club, listened to every band that came through, because in those days we didn't have MTV, we didn't have television.
I was inspired by a lot of people when I was young, every band that came through town, to the theater, or the dance hall. I was at every dance, every night club, listened to every band that came through, because in those days we didn't have MTV, we didn't have television.
There was a time Michael Jackson couldn't get his video on MTV because he was considered to be 'urban.' The Michael Jackson. So I literally have to be the Michael Jackson of apparel in order to break down the doors for everyone who will come after I'm gone, after I'm dead.
Even if we had the No. 1 video on MTV, and we had money and everything else, I think we'd always have more to do. I don't ever want to wake up in the morning and say, 'What are we gonna do today?' I'm afraid of that. I don't ever want to wake up and feel like we've conquered.
Working in MTV's development team, my days would consist of pitches and deciding which concepts we wanted to buy. We would then develop those into a pilot. Very few ended up making it to a full series, but if they did, I would manage the project alongside the show's creators.
My dad was very excited about me doing 'Laguna Beach,' and he thought it was a great opportunity. My mom, however, living in Chicago, was a little nervous. I mean she had some reservations about MTV. I think there was a point in my life where I wasn't even allowed to watch MTV!
I wasn't allowed to watch MTV before school, but somehow I managed to, when I was five or six and Fiona Apple's video for "Criminal" came on. She was so odd and dark, and I immediately felt some kind of connection with her. She was also the first person I admired for their looks.
I think hip-hop is actually one of the most challenging things that's happened in music in a long time. The people who are in charge of what people see or hear are afraid. What you hear on top 40 or what you see on BET or MTV is not a fair representation of what is really going on...
That was the coolest thing about 'Baby Got Back.' The establishment didn't embrace the song, which is what kept me from being the next pop guy to fizzle out and get laughed at, get dissed on TV. That helped save me. The fact that MTV banned the record made the record, in a weird way.
MTV and the culture industry never are talking about community relevance, hood organization, they aren't talking about ethical codes, they aren't talking about forms of political organization, they don't speak about codes inside the jails. What they talk about are superficial things.
Winning 'Best Vlogger of 2013' from MTV is a really wonderful honor, and I wanted to thank all of you out there that used your fingers and clicked a button and made this happen, and to all of you that accidentally clicked my name and you were trying to click Jack and Finn, I'm sorry.
I had a somewhat religious upbringing. Not strict, but it was there, and I'm kind of thankful for that. If you grow up just watching MTV, that's its own form of religion, and it's not even based on happiness or communal responsibility. I mean, try to construct a worldview out of that.
I wish that we all would have slowed down and savored the moment, loved what was happening and then appreciate it. It was going by so fast. Whatever the record told us to do, we'd do. We were just constantly touring, and then MTV happened and that kicked things up a notch for everybody.
I remember after a year in London, I was at an MTV party and a friend saying to me that it was such a brave thing to do to come over to London by myself. I never thought it was a big deal. It was my dream. I am so independent. It is just ridiculous. I am too independent for my own good.
A platform is the base from which something big happens. In our case, we're an entertainment platform in the sense that there are people signing up like MTV, Burberry, folks like Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber. And why? Because it's their channel to control their entertainment to their fans.
Before MTV, if you put out an album that sold 50,000 copies, your band could afford not to have day jobs for a while. That meant you could stick around, put out another album or two. Maybe it would be the second or third album where you'd make the statement you'd been trying to make all along.
The Internet makes it easier to find good music I would have to say. The radio stations that play the kind of music you were talking about, I don't think me and Curt Smith would be that inclined to listen to. It doesn't really affect us and I certainly don't remember the last time I watched MTV.
I think a lot of people who become music fans have that moment where they break from their parents' music, they break from the radio and MTV - at least in my generation, they did, and MTV isn't really a thing anymore. And you discover something that defines you, that is outside of the mainstream.
It's really tough to make a name for yourself without compromising and without fitting yourself into a real specific mold. When I made the choice that I would be involved in every aspect of music and not necessarily make music for radio or MTV, I was saying, 'OK, this is me. You decide who it is.'
The thing to keep in mind is that's how I started long before MTV and Twitter and Facebook. I studied at broadcasting school so I could learn how to shoot and edit videos, and tried to create my own television show so we could see through these wacky visions we had of funny bits we wanted to shoot.
The Beijing Olympics were an exercise in Chinese soft power. Americans have the 'Voice of America' and the Fulbright scholarships. But, the fact is, in fact, that probably Hollywood and MTV and McDonalds have done more for American soft power around the world than any specifically government activity.
I've been performing since I was very little, about three years old. I was inspired at first by the MTV artists of the '80s and started putting on 'shows' in the apartment, most of them set to Michael Jackson's 'Bad' album. In my mind, there was a full lighting rig behind me... but it was just a couch.
At its best, MTV puts a face to the names, if you know what I mean. I think if you can take the expression of a song much farther, that's great. And it's one of the only outlets there is for artistic filmmaking. But it's a double-edged sword. At it's worst, MTV is just a lot of TV commercials for songs.
I measure success in terms of the connection with the audience, which we've been able to do in spades. I mean, it's very hard to do that. You think about it, you go back in time, you can say, 'Well, there's, like, 'Saturday Night Live' and 'Rolling Stone' or 'MTV.' I think 'Vice' is in that category now.
I tore up my knee break dancing. I have no idea how that happened. Apparently these legs are meant for swimming, but not dancing. I was watching an MTV video, thinking, "I can do this." Definitely not. I heard a pop. I sat down and it blew up like a watermelon. I had to go to the hospital and get surgery.
I tore up my knee break dancing. I have no idea how that happened. Apparently these legs are meant for swimming, but not dancing. I was watching an MTV video, thinking, 'I can do this.' Definitely not. I heard a pop. I sat down and it blew up like a watermelon. I had to go to the hospital and get surgery.
I just got on Twitter because there was some MTV film blog that quoted me on something really innocuous that I supposedly said on Twitter before I was even on Twitter. So then I had to get on Twitter to say: 'This is me. I'm on Twitter. If there's somebody else saying that they're me on Twitter, they're not.'
I have never made a cent off a record in my life. I have never recouped enough, and I never sold enough. When people see you have a song on MTV, they think you are doing well - but you know, the way the traditional label deal was set up, it is really hard for an artist, unless they sold a lot, to see anything.
[MTV] just wanted a regular person that knew a decent amount about music.I'm so used to doing solitary interviews. You have some control - it's quiet, it's just you with your tape recorder and the person. Then when I was in front of the camera, I broke out in hives, which I continued to do well after I got the job.
As one of the first African-Americans to be out on a reality program, MTV's 'The Real World: Philadelphia,' I understand the courage it takes to live your truth on a national platform, the importance it holds to LGBT communities of color, and the power it has to create a greater conversation within American culture.
What's amazing is that the Web enables you to build a kind of channel that wouldn't have made sense for cable, in the same way cable enabled you to build content that wouldn't have made sense for broadcast. You couldn't have done CNN with the broadcast networks; you couldn't have done MTV with the broadcast networks.
With MTV in the '80s, you made your album but then you needed to use any money you made to create a video - instead of being able to use that money to pay for you and your band to live on while you wrote new songs. So MTV upped the ante of looking for one hit. Conceptual bands who didn't have a hit were going to lose.
A lot of MTV's programming is hip-hop based, and the messages are usually all about bling bling. A lot of hip-hop artists sing about stuff that's more important, but they seldom get heard. The ones who get heard are the ones saying, 'Think about yourself. Make your money. It's all you. Everybody have a good time and party.'
New York's niche is content, and content is becoming more valuable. Just think about what is more valuable: MTV or the cable system that you use to get MTV? Howard Stern or the radio station you use to listen to him? Ultimately, technology becomes a commodity, and content - real, true branded content - becomes more valuable.
Music became less understandable in the wake of the new MTV era. You weren't supposed to be anything other than a pop star, to not go deeper than that. It was really strange. It was suffocating, image-wise. What you could talk about in a song changed; if you were misunderstood, you were really misunderstood - taken literally.
You get to a point where everything is so important. One day you have 'Letterman,' and the next day you're at the MTV Movie Awards, and the next day you have a sold-out show for over 15,000 people. You can't cancel anything, because it's just too much to let everyone down, which is an interesting thing about being in a bigger band.
I got into Dio when I was still quite young. I remember seeing the video for 'Rainbow In The Dark' on MTV. That was my first taste of Dio. It wasn't until years later that I realized he had this whole career with Rainbow and Black Sabbath and even going back to Elf. When I saw that video, it instantly became one of my favorite songs.
I think that for the five-year-old watching MTV right now, Lady Gaga is going to be an iconic person. In 20 years, the people who are here and talking to journalists will be like, 'Oh Lady Gaga changed my life, Nicki Minaj changed my life.' They'll be saying who influenced them and it will be Lady Gaga, Nicki Minaj, artists like that.
What's most insidious about MTV is that it commodifies precisely those things that young people believe are subversive. In other words, subversity itself has become a commodity. It's all a way to trick young people into believing that there's something unique about what they do, but this is all completely a corporately designed maneuver.
Personally, I'm not into reality shows - I can't even name a reality show that I was a really big fan of, altogether as a whole, not just from MTV. Like, if ABC has another reality show, I'm like, 'Oh God, another reality show.' But people love them. 'The Hills', 'Laguna Beach'... those do extremely well. It's just a personal preference.
See, because I played behind the scenes so much I already knew what to expect. So I started getting myself ready. I was creating work for myself to do. People were telling me to take a rest and saying "damn, you already acting like you going on MTV or something." In my mind I was because I knew it was what I'd have to do in the near future.
Right before my dad died he was planning to go to New York City for the video music awards that he was nominated for, the MTV music awards. You couldn't tell him he wasn't going to go. It was going to happen. But he wound up having to check into the hospital there, and not too long later he died. But his spirit never gave up - his body did.
Iron Maiden and Metallica are bigger now than they ever were. They're playing stadiums across the entire planet. Even though it seems like their heyday was back when MTV and the radio played their songs all the time, the truth is that they've gotten bigger now because they play all the time, and people know they're going to get a great show.
The videos are sometimes the only way for people across the country and different places to see and hear the music. They may not get the same radio stations or they don't get the same TV channels, they don't have the same MTV that plays the same music. People will use to the Internet and that's why YouTube and stuff like that is so important.
4Shbab has been dubbed Islamic MTV. Its creator, who is an Egyptian TV producer called Ahmed Abu Haiba, wants young people to be inspired by Islam to lead better lives. He reckons the best way to get that message across is to use the enormously popular medium of music videos. 4Shbab was set up as an alternative to existing Arab music channels.
First of all you got ESPN, Fox Sports, all that, you don't miss one thing. People don't understand that. Like you could watch the whole NFL, I've got the RedZone coverage, I got my DirecTV stuff. You can watch everything in the NFL in a whole hour and you missed nothing. Anything that was worth watching is going to be played over and over again. It's like the MTV Awards.
We just need the laws to change - it's 2012," JWoww said to MTV News. "I want to see my best friend get married, and I want to see everyone in every state be able to get married. It's their choice. It's not affecting our lives. So let them be equal. We want them to be able to experience life, and if they want to be miserable and married, let them be miserable and married like us.
I spent the '80s in the Soviet Union and when I came to America it was '89 and I was in an immigrant bubble and we didn't have MTV or cable, so I kind of discovered the '80s when I was already older, maybe in college. And I continued to have this romantic obsession with all those films and there's this sound I hear in my head and it's kind of this bittersweet romantic, dark sound.
We changed our rules. If a player does not have some sot of altercation on or off the court once each month, we fine him...The guys that are our top four scorers, each of them will be required once every two months to appear on MTV. The guys who shoot the worst free throws over a one-month period, next time we have a TV game they're required to look into the camera and beat their chests after they make a good play.