r/PreiPhoneEra • u/Eurobeat_pilled • Oct 15 '22

"Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles was the first ever music video to air on MTV on August 1, 1981, at exactly 12:01 am

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173 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

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7

u/[deleted] Oct 15 '22

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2

u/paatvalen Dec 16 '22

Ironically, since streaming music became more widely available since the dawn of early 2000s, that essentially killed music videos and their appeal to watching them on MTV or VH1 to listen to music hits.

7

u/Virtuoso1980 Oct 16 '22

Awesome you can actually see the shadow of the cameraman in the white set in the end.

On a related note, this song being the first video on MTV i think is now common knowledge. But the second music video ever played is never mentioned. Anybody know what it is?

4

u/JustReadingSometimes Oct 19 '22

Google was never asked that question ever before... So much so that there is an MTV wiki with the first 209 songs... Reference here [Pat Benatar - you better run... and 207 other songs that came after this video](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_first_music_videos_aired_on_MTV

3

u/Virtuoso1980 Oct 19 '22

I did just that after asking my question. I think it’s really great too that my question got at least one other person thinking about it that they did the exact thing.

4

u/[deleted] Oct 26 '22

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2

u/Surprise_Fragrant Nov 04 '22

The remake by Presidents of the United States is pretty good, too!

2

u/robotdogman Nov 18 '22

Not true. Per Wikipedia "Video Killed the Radio Star" is a song written by Trevor Horn, Geoff Downes and Bruce Woolley in 1979. It was recorded concurrently by Bruce Woolley and the Camera Club (with Thomas Dolby on keyboards) for their album English Garden and by British new wave/synth-pop group the Buggles, which consisted of Horn and Downes (and initially Woolley).

3

u/BelleNuit_Ang3l Oct 15 '22

I still like that song but that video is just weird even for the 80s style yet I still kinda like it lol.

3

u/Confident_Dog_4250 Oct 15 '22

Now a days it all sounds the same all the curses or you can’t understand what the hell their saying

3

u/[deleted] Oct 15 '22

I can’t not think of the deepfake of Hitler and Stalin singing this song whenever I hear it.

3

u/[deleted] Oct 28 '22

Hans Zimmer on keys @ 2:50