You're browsing the archives for the category 1988
The video opens with Cher and some boytoy looking at themselves in the same mirror. He’s wearing a white scoop-neck t-shirt, cut low in both the back and the front, and has a big puffy poodle haircut. Cher looks exactly like she did in 1978, or in 1998. The boytoy is fussing with his hair. […]
(There was actually one more ad in that last commercial break, a promo spot for MTV, featuring a guy tied up on the floor of an elevator, being forced to listen to the elevator operator sing along to a swelling orchestral melody.) “Five of the top 100 videos of 1988 are Michael Jackson videos,” Kevin […]
posted 12 June 2008 in 1988. 2 comments
MTV plays a promo for a Michael Jackson video debuting on New Year’s Day at 5 pm, 8pm, 9pm, and 10pm: “Leave Me Alone.” In the clips we see, Jackson rides a toy airplane and dances with the Elephant Man’s bones. A stack of newspapers has fake tabloid headlines (“Michael Weds Alien”). I believe in […]
posted 10 June 2008 in 1988. 2 comments
Kevin Seal explains that the top-100 countdown will, in fact, have more than 100 songs in it. He doesn’t actually say they’re including the videos so they can pad out the countdown’s running time, but that’s the gist of it: “There are quite a few top-notch videos that you won’t see on this little countdown […]
posted 5 June 2008 in 1988. 4 comments
Another interview clip: all four Bangles sitting on a couch, not looking especially happy. “The idea you have in your head,” says guitarist Vicki Peterson, pointing to her head in case we’re not familiar with that part of her body, “is not going to get directly translated onto film. It just isn’t. There’s so many […]
posted 3 June 2008 in 1988. 3 comments
Back to Kevin Seal, who looks into the camera seriously, apparently channeling Dan Rather, and says, “’88 was a really heavy year for a lot of us, including Glenn Frey.” Seal then cracks a smile and snarks about Frey for a little while, egregiously dropping the G in the title of his latest album, Soul […]
posted 29 May 2008 in 1988. 7 comments
Another commercial break. The first spot’s for MTV’s “Big Bang ’89,” the live party airing later that night, featuring “music and madness from New York and L.A.” (We see close-ups of those two cities on a map, in case we need some help remembering them, or maybe to help us find them in case we’re […]
You can watch “Together Forever” here. No, you won’t get Rickrolled–for that to happen, technically you would have to be misdirected to “Never Gonna Give You Up.” But since “Together Forever” was the next Astley single off the Stock-Aitken-Waterman assembly line, it sure feels like “Never Gonna Give You Up, Part 2” or Astley II: […]
posted 22 May 2008 in 1988. 4 comments
Stiletto boots decorated with silver chains, a dramatically swelling synthesizer, scarves tied to the microphone stand, lots of makeup and hairspray–this must be a hair-metal band! In the case of Vixen, the musicians slathering on the cosmetics were all women. I suppose this qualified as a twist, given that the Sunset Strip metal scene was […]
posted 20 May 2008 in 1988. 3 comments
And we go to a commercial break! First, there’s an MTV promo touting their dedication to new music. “Every major band was a new name at one time,” says a bass voice (moderately portentous, but without enough presence to get movie-trailer work). Then they flash the names of these brand-new bands that they’re backing with […]
posted 15 May 2008 in 1988. 2 comments
