The Tubes were MTV fixtures at the outset, having been early adopters of the music video format - even making an entire video album for 1981 LP The Completion Backwards Principle, helmed by the Cecil B. But the really spellbinding parts of it are just the solo shots of frontwoman Siouxsie Sioux dancing up a storm in eye-popping lipstick and liner, looking halfway between Kate Bush and Robert Smith and just as iconic as either. post-punk quartet playing their Juju single, while the camera spins above them (or the stage rotates beneath them), and footage of the band running through the woods is spliced in and laid over the footage. “Spellbound” is mostly a performance clip of the U.K.
Siouxsie and the Banshees, “Spellbound” (dir. Plus, the red-leather-clad Reno made both the neckerchief and rock band-headband fashion crazes look cool in this clip. Guitarist Paul Dean and bassist Scott Smith lurk in the background and unleash synchronized stage moves, while frontman Mike Reno jogs enthusiastically around the set, acting out certain lyrics (“C’mon baby, let’s go” brings an exaggerated head nod) and singing his heart out.
No stodgy live moves here: Loverboy are mugging for the camera and loving every minute of it in this over-the-top performance video. Loverboy, “Workin’ For the Weekend” (dir. Jackson’s and Martha Quinn’s voices in your head introducing each of ’em.Ĥ0. Read and watch closely enough and you can probably still hear J.J. So here they are: the 40 greatest clips from the year that marked one giant leap for music video, with a YouTube playlist of all 40 at the bottom. But these are the videos that best reflect the stage that the artform had reached by 1981, as it began to crawl out of the primordial ooze of decades prior - still sloppy and unrefined, but increasingly creative, and a whole lot of fun. These aren’t necessarily the videos MTV was playing to death in 1981 - many of which were originally filmed and released in prior years, like The Buggles’ 1979 clip for “Video Killed the Radio Star,” famously the first video ever broadcast on the channel - and some of them didn’t actually make rotation until later years. To celebrate this official Year Zero for the music video as a cultural event, Billboard‘s staff is counting down their 40 favorite videos of 1981. performance shows like Top of the Pops or The Old Grey Whistle Test, or just sent to markets where an artist didn’t plan to tour to give them added visibility - budgets and aims were low, with many shot as rudimentary performance clips, or as unintelligible art pieces. MTV’s golden age would kick off in earnest a couple years later, as the channel’s increasing influence inspired an influx of both label spending and artist ambition - not to mention an emerging class of video auteurs behind the camera, many of whom would eventually make the jump to feature films. Since most 1981 videos were shot before MTV even existed - filmed to be shown on proto-MTV video programs like PopClips or U.K. What’s more, the music videos weren’t quite there yet either: By most estimates, MTV only had somewhere between 100 and 200 videos in their library at the time, and had to lean disproportionately on certain artists with more clips available (like REO Speedwagon and Rod Stewart) simply to fill 24 hours of programming.Īnd the quality of those videos? Well… it wasn’t the highest plane the art form would reach. When MTV first launched on Aug 1, 1981, it wasn’t available in most major markets - the staff held their launch party in Fort Lee, NJ, because no one could get the channel in Manhattan - and the operation was still fairly ramshackle, with a particularly technical difficulty-plagued first 24 hours.
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