This week, I’ve decided to take a look at the first video on MTV which launched a million Teen Moms, “Video Killed the Radio Star”. The Buggles’ barely remembered hit has a particularly uninspiring video to go with it.
The poppy new wave track focused on the dual perspectives of embracing and being unsure of new technology, and the video heavily focuses on that. The opening uses simplistic overlaid graphics of a neon light over the lead singer, which is used occasionally as a transition. Once the shot backs out to reveal the singers on the stage the video becomes static. The majority focuses on them, with minimal pans in or out, but rarely does the scene change. The most visually compelling things about the shot are the lead singer’s metallic suit and the awful perms on the backup singers.
One could assume that as one of the first “music videos,” to make a boring video was an unintentional choice, one due to the lack of understanding of a new medium. The Buggles make it clear that this is not the case with a wideshot near the end of the video that reveals an unenthused crowd and a large sign proclaiming “DISCO.” To have a dead medium as the mis en scene for such a lifeless video puts the practice of making a music video into the grave with its birth.
This creates meaning for their lifeless composition showing the the music video is nothing but pomp and circumstance around a song. In choosing to create such an unengaging video, the Buggles suggested that music was best suited to audio only. This nod to the audience and the stationary nature of video seems to be a supplement to the song’s meaning.
The Buggles did lament the death of radio, and seemed to want to show why video was a poor choice to represent music. Though now we’ve come to see that it isn’t always the case, the Buggles used this to their advantage. As technical pioneers of a medium it’s ironic to see such an anti-video be hailed as the ignition point of the music video trend.