MTV brings back the lost art of music videos

The music video used to be one of the better expres­sions of today’s cul­ture. Like short sto­ries or satirical cartoons during the 18th cen­tury, music videos are what people talked about. There were World Premier’s of an artists new video. Grammy awards for the industry’s best. Director’s careers were launched based on the suc­cess of the music video. I said used to be.

Because the music video died.

No one cares when Beyoncé’s new video is released. I don’t think most people would know where to watch it if they did. The Music Tele­vi­sion sta­tion MTV stopped play­ing music tele­vi­sion about the time Bruce Willis was saying Yippee Ki-​Yay. YouTube pulls them off as fast as they can. Over that last decade, the music video became an “oh, and also” for artists cre­at­ing new music. The art and cre­ativ­ity put into the music video was no longer at the fore­front of cul­ture. That is until now.

Because the music video is alive again.

First came YouTube, then Hulu. MTV has now launched MTV​mu​sic.com. The premise is simple. Every music video ever made. Online. No longer do you have to buy your favorite video on DVD or wait through com­mer­cials on Yahoo Music. For now the site is com­pletely ad free. You can imbed the videos into blog posts, web pages, and face­book.

Remem­ber Friday Night Videos? Now people can create their own Video Vote blog. Music fan pages can easily imbed the obscure and rarely seen videos. Steel-​mouthed ado­les­cents of the world can once again unite over out­fits and hair­styles of their heroes. But the coolest thing is that once again we have a portal into one of the lost arts of today’s pop cul­ture. The music video.

Here are a few Mar­ble­head favorites: