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Ten Music Videos That Marked An Era

The legendary clips of the 80s, according to the authors of “I Want My MTV”

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Ten Music Videos That Marked An Era | PlayGround | Music Features

The book “I Want My MTV” - a highly recommendable oral history of how the TV station popularised the video clip, having a major influence on the music industry – inspired us to make a list of some legendary videos made during the channel's golden age, starting in the early 80s.

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In the 21st century we can hardly imagine a pop song without its video: if it's not the band making one, some fan will upload theirs to YouTube. But it wasn't always like this. Although the idea of putting images to music can be traced back all the way to the start of cinema, video clips as we know them today didn't become fashionable until 1981, when MTV appeared, a TV channel only a handful of visionaries placed their bets on.

In the highly recommendable book “I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story Of The Music Video Revolution”, published in the USA in October 2011, Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum wrote an oral history of the TV station. It’s full of anecdotes about the main figures from the golden age, between 1981 and 1992, the year MTV decided to venture into reality shows.

PlayGround is going nostalgic now: we're giving you an overview of the most emblematic videos from those wonder years, the ones that established the video clip as a phenomenon that is both artistic and cultural. Perhaps you'll discover something new.

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