Hacker News Reader

Comment by listenallyall | Hacker News Reader

This is a pretty hot take. INXS had no MTV visibility until around 4 or 5 years after the channel started, by which time, plenty of artists had done "creative work". AC/DC was popular, but they pretty much ONLY released straight performance videos. Contrast them with Van Halen, who also initially released concert videos, although they recognized the power of the medium and focused on David Lee Roth's crazy leg kicks and Eddie's solos to make extremely watchable videos... and later pivoted to classic studio videos like Hot For Teacher. Olivia Newton-John's enormous popularity was due to Grease, not MTV. If anything, despite her one big hit (Physical), her career under-performed, compared to other female solo acts of her era (Madonna, Cyndi Lauper).

And then you top it off by naming Dire Straits as an example of "just performing the song" when ultimately, that exact band released perhaps the most iconic and unforgettable video of all time.

View on HN

Sure, AC/DC wasn’t such a great example; I added that as an afterthought. And yep, ONJ already had US success - but she was able to hit the ground running with cool videos when MTV started, and she’d been big on Countdown for a few years before Grease happened.

But the point holds up well for Men at Work, INXS and also Split Enz.

INXS’s first US chart success came in 1983 with Shabooh Shoobah, that was recorded in 1982. The video for The One Thing [1], though low-budget, was very much not a filmed performance of the song, whereas the Van Halen videos I can find from that era were (though of course Van Halen would have been fast to catch up, innovators that there were). Then in 1983 they released Original Sin [2], which was produced by Nile Rodgers and had Daryl Hall singing backing vocals, so they were already in the big league by then. The albums The Swing (1984) and Listen Like Thieves (1985) all charged well in the US, thanks in big part to cool videos and MTV airplay.

Split Enz was one of the very first bands shown on MTV, with History Never Repeats [3]. They originated from New Zealand but were active in Australia and appeared on Countdown a lot, and thus had cool videos ready to go.

As for Dire Straits, the whole reason I mentioned the pre-MTV track Sultans of Swing was for its contrast with their work after MTV was established.

[1] https://youtu.be/XJyKTNdPL5s

[2] https://youtu.be/PTULqzrhBWA

[3] https://youtu.be/tzuJXqgsiSM

Split Enz? I mean, ok, but I'll take Talking Heads if we're comparing bands "well-prepared for the emergence of MTV." Once In a Lifetime was released in 1980. Enough said.

Men At Work made a terrific song in Down Under, and an excellent video. Wish we'd heard more from Colin Hay.

INXS is a fine band, but hardly pioneers of music videos, and despite what you wrote, were virtually invisible on MTV until 1985 and really didn't hit their stride until the Kick album in 1987. Given that MTV launched in 1981, INXS does not bolster your initial statement that "Australian artists were uniquely well-prepared for the emergence of MTV." To suggest that Van Halen needed to "catch up" is absurd, given that 1984 was released in, you guessed it, 1984. You also seem to think performance videos are inferior to concept videos... Van Halen's greatest strength as a band was their performances. Check out Unchained... insanely great from DLR's first leap to the massive wall of speakers, to the fans enthusiasm, to lighting Alex's gong on fire at the end. Impossible to watch without wanting to go see them live.

OK, you're trying to refute my assertions by interpreting my comments as (a) portraying these acts as having been dominant on MTV from the start, and (b) dismissing US acts like Van Halen as being behind and bad at video, and suggesting that there were zero US acts making concept videos then. I'm doing neither, and I'm certainly not dissing Van Halen, or performance videos! I'd only point out that Van Halen's videos in 1981 for So This Is Love [1] and Unchained [2] were very basic compared to the ones they started making from 1982 and particularly from 1984, after MTV got up and running. But I'm not making value judgements about any of it, I'm just commenting on an interesting thing that was going on in Australia in the years before MTV started.

What I'm really pointing out is that these emerging Australian/NZ acts only got any MTV airplay at all because they were already quite adept in the art of music video, and were well positioned to take advantage of this new platform, which is surprising for a region so small, remote, and not normally known for cultural innovation.

In the case of Split Enz, they are in the very video we're talking about – twice. They were the 10th act ever played on MTV. They wouldn't have been there if they didn't have good videos already made. Several of their later videos also earned airplay on MTV, and their successor band Crowded House built on this to achieve some major US chart success in 86-87.

Re. Men at Work, their profile on Allmusic states "Their funny, irreverent videos became MTV favorites, helping send "Who Can It Be Now?" and "Down Under" to number one."

INXS may not have seemed very visible on MTV in the early days to you (I assume you're basing these arguments on your own recollections), but they were absolutely there, and there's a direct path from their first appearances in 82-83 to the huge success of Kick a few years later. Of 1982/3's The One Thing, Wikipedia [3] (sourced from their 2005 autobiography) says "The music video was their first video to air on the fledgling MTV and went into high rotation on the channel, which added to the chart success of the single in the US." (That track made it to #30 in the Billboard Hot 100 and #2 on Billboard Top Tracks).

If you use Google Books to search for "MTV" in that autobiography [4], you can read how their management was very deliberate and strategic in leveraging their existing repertoire of music videos to get on MTV soon after it launched, to tour the US extensively off the back of the profile they were building via MTV, and ride that all the way to the top with Kick only four years later.

I'm not insisting that INXS's early videos are masterpieces - clearly they're not. But they were a continuation of a trend that had been building in Australia since 1974, and the band was surrounded by people who understood the format and the industry trends very well by then, so when MTV arrived they were good to go.

But also, from reading about Countdown [5] now, I'm reminded it wasn't just about AU/NZ acts getting their start. Countdown was a platform where several US/European acts found early success, leading to later signings and/or chart success in the bigger markets. Blondie, Abba, Meatloaf, John Mellencamp and Bob Scaggs are some of the acts that found success in Australia earlier than elsewhere, thanks to Countdown, and presumably it helped at least some of them learn about the music video medium earlier than others. Talking Heads appeared live on Countdown in 1981, and Once In a Lifetime charted much better in Australia than in the US. Indeed, one of Van Halen's first ever TV interviews was for Countdown, filmed in London in 1978 [6].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfxG7BRn7xs

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojNrj-sWfpk

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_One_Thing_(song)

[4] https://books.google.com.au/books?redir_esc=y&id=MxTMEwwCIK8...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countdown_(Australian_TV_progr...

[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ymyADifQtA

Your best argument would have been to point out that Video Killed The Radio Star, Bette Davis Eyes, Young Turks, Total Eclipse of the Heart, Gypsy, Hungry Like The Wolf and Rio -- all very early MTV hits -- were all directed by Australian Russell Mulcahy.

> sourced from their 2005 autobiography

you do realize, right, that you can't accept the band's own authorized biography (i.e. propaganda) as a reliable source for how popular or successful they were?

> OK, you're trying to refute my assertions by interpreting my comments as (a) and (b)

No, no, no. I'm not interpreting, I'm not twisting, or inferring. You stated that Aussies were "uniquely well-prepared." You said that. UNIQUELY. You ARE saying that Australians were ready while others were not -- that's what "uniquely" means, literally. You also said "most videos were just of the group on a studio stage," which isn't remotely true.

Lastly, I call myself out for being petty and pedantic. Arguing the merits of this band or that band is ultimately futile, as is getting in a debate about something meant to entertain. But given the origins of my username, there's a certain obligation to set the facts straight here :)

For the record:

- That's not what I meant by uniquely. By unique I was referring to Countdown, which was unique for its format, its popularity, and for its influence, which is why several of the world's biggest acts since the 70s-80s hold Countdown in such affection, and regard its host Molly Meldrum as a pioneer and a friend. Nobody else has mentioned any primetime shows that played a lot of music video clips, in the US or anywhere else in the world, any where near as early as Countdown. The earliest I can find in the US is Video Concert Hall from 1978/9, but that didn't seem to have great prominence. The Wikipedia page on Music Video [1], in the section "1974–1980: Beginnings of music television" names Countdown and its rival show, Sounds, in the very first sentence. (I wasn't thinking of Sounds as I'm not old enough to remember it well and it's not as widely reminisced about here, but it was part of the same ecosystem). You helpfully mention Russell Mulcahy - who got his start producing music videos for Sounds. So the very first song ever played on MTV has a direct link back to the music shows that started in Australia in 1974. None of this is to say that no other acts in the world were at all well-prepared, obviously. It was just a different kind of preparation. And yep it's boring/lame to fixate on a strict definition of single word used in an obviously hand-wavy comment at the start of the thread, but that notwithstanding, it's clearly an incorrect interpretation of what I meant, particularly given my later comments.

- We're at the point of debating the interpretation of the word "most", which is a sure sign it's time to walk away, but another commenter made the effort to go through the first twelve clips in this MTV video to compare styles and artist origins [2]. I have no problem conceding that UK acts were also doing more artistic video work, due to Top of the Pops running a long time, even if most of that program's content was live performances.

- INXS's Billboard hits from 1983 and 1985/86 are there for us all to see in the historical records [3]. But it's "propaganda" for the band to recount that airplay on MTV helped them get there? OK then. Let's hear from Alan Hunter [4], who was an MTV VJ at the time: 'Beginning in 1982, he recalls VJs “being called into meetings with executives, who told us there was an arrangement between Atlantic and the network. We were going to see if MTV could break a band.” INXS, he says, served as a guinea pig, and indeed, heavy video rotation of its debut U.S. single, “The One Thing,” in 1983, helped drive the song to No. 30 on the Hot 100.'

Finally, I have learned a huge amount from this discussion, so thanks for your part in that.

And you should look up some videos of Countdown on YouTube. It really was awesome :)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_video

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28111528

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INXS_discography#Singles

[4] https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/magazine-feature/800...

> Wish we'd heard more from Colin Hay.

Colin Hay is amazing and still touring. His show is a mixture and songs and storytelling. He has some good stories about the crazy times during Men At Work's peak.

Just in the last half-hour he appeared on our TV screen here in Australia as part of an Olympics retrospective – gave a spoken tribute to the Australian team and belted out an acoustic rendition of Down Under. Never gets old.

Note that INXS also trotted out the "filmed performance" video for Don't Change from Shabooh Shoobah and was one of, if not the, first hit for the band internationally.

We're talking about trends not absolutes!

The first INXS video that got regular play on MTV was The One Thing, which was a concept video.

Their other early videos up to and including Don't Change were mostly live performance, though they all used more interesting locations and effects than other videos around that time.

But they really hit their straps with the videos they made in 1983 and 1984 for The Swing, some in Japan with Yasuhiko Yamamoto, and the others with Richard Lowenstein, who had been doing music videos for Australian acts since about 1979.

Sultans came 3-4 years before MTV and ~7 years before "money for nothing" but it's a funny example artist to choose, I agree. "Money for nothing" was an early iconic video and interesting early use of CG.

Yeah I chose it because it was such a contrast with Money for Nothing, illustrating how things changed with MTV.

There's a more iconic "video" than Subterranean Homesick Blues?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com