MTV’s MVPs

In conversation with two different friends yesterday about David Bowie covering Charlene’s gooptastic “Never Been to Me” (don’t ask), I learned how this hit peaked at #3 on this date forty-two years ago. Ahead of it? Rick Springfield’s creepo “Don’t Talk to Strangers” and Joey Piscopo and Eddie Murphy’s “Ebony and Ivory.” After a scan at the MTV chart that Billboard once published — about the only way to know aside from original broadcasts what played on music television — I gasped when I spotted the #22-peaking “Rock of Life” in heavy rotation. In 1988. Rick Springfield.

I doubt RCA Records’ payola machine had an interest in promoting Springfield at least four years past his salad years. Maybe it did. Or did Les Garland and his MTV programming team have a crush on the old guard — those acts played on or around August 1, 1981, aka The First Day? Gratitude might explain it: Rod Stewart and other English acts had years’ worth of promo videos ready to go. I thought about other acts whom the network garlanded as youth culture’s last best hope well into the mid ’90s. I exclude Michael Jackson and Prince: we know what it took in 1983, and white artists called them out for it at the time.

For the sake of fun I omitted obvious qualifiers like Phil Collins/Genesis from this uncomprehensive list. Bowie too — MTV gave big love to “Absolute Beginners” and “Day-In Day-Out” but after 1988 or so he was done. (NB: I didn’t hyperlink every song unless I needed to):

Rick Springfield

Although he earned five Billboard top tens out of 17 top 40 singles (!), Rickster was treated like royalty by MTV. Minor things like “Human Touch,” “State of the Heart,” and “Bop ‘Till You Drop” kept the Australian musician-actor in our faces after the Tiger Beat covers stopped. Celebrate youth indeed.

Fleetwood Mac/Stevie Nicks

Flexing its promotional muscle early, MTV played Stevie Nicks’ first solo hit “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” four times on Aug.1, more than any other; this Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers collaboration would peak at #3 weeks later, the biggest hit for either artist. A year later a reconstituted but petulant Fleetwood Mac enjoyed MTV’s first “World Premier” with “Gypsy.” Like Springfield the quintet and MTV’s romance proved more enduring than the intramural ones. Nicks singles like “If Anyone Falls,” “I Can’t Wait,” and, wow, “Rooms on Fire” (from 1989!) went into heavy rotation. So did Lindsey Buckingham’s “Go Insane” and Christine McVie’s “Got a Hold On Me.” Lest we forget, the public airing of Fleetwood Mac’s reunion happened on the network in 1997.

The Rolling Stones/Mick Jagger

The Stones may not have earned First Day play, but MTV approached Mick Jagger (along with Pete Townshend and beloved Pat Benatar) for its “I Want My MTV” campaign. Starting in 1981-1982 these guys didn’t lack for medium or heavy rotation through 1997’s “Anybody Seen My Baby,” which k.d. lang appreciated. It didn’t stop there. Ah, MTV, the only place in America where you could hear Jagger’s “Lucky in Love,” “Hard Woman,” and the Thatcherite “Let’s Work” (Clarence and Ginni Thomas’ most played Spotify single) several times a day.

Pat Benatar

One of the few women by whose side the network stuck, Pat Benatar could claim “You Better Run” was the second video the network aired. Eighties fans know the “Love is a Battlefield” clip, in which Benatar fights for her right to run her own street posse of dancers, but you’d be forgiven for thinking “Shadows of the Night,” “Le Bel Age,” and 1988’s “All Fired Up” were top five Billboard smashes from the number of time MTV aired their videos. She would be invincible!

Duran Duran

At the height of the Reagan Revolution the U.S. Congress passed the Save Artists From Declining Sales Act, known popularly as the Duran Duran Act, with bipartisan majorities. One of its mandates required MTV to play a Duran Duran single around the clock despite waning sales. The act also covered not just solo projects like the Power Station and Arcadia but Andy Taylor, feted as if he were Billy Squier; for his trouble he got heavy rotation for “Take It Easy, “When the Rain Comes Down” and “I Might Lie,” the latter a collaboration with the Sex Pistol Steve Jones called Thunder.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

For a guy who loathed contemporary music as a zygote Tom Petty sure did love his MTV. “You Got Lucky” was one of the first videos by a heartland rock act whose subject (Mad Max-esque road warriors in cool western drag) did nothing to illuminate or illustrate the song. The Alice in Wonderland romp “Don’t Come Around Here No More” offered more of the same, plus making David Stewart scary as fuck for millions of kids. Coming across the Cool Stoner Uncle, Petty seduced MTV hard, and in 1994 he got his reward: the “Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award.”

Daryl Hall and John Oates/Daryl Hall

Their goofball dancing in trenchcoats and in front of and behind oversized letters helped turn this duo into the most successful American duo in history. Although they peaked during the first Reagan administration, Daryl ‘n’ John got their so-called Liberty concert on the air (pretty good in an amped-out coke way), and MTV played Hall solo singles from the big (“Dreamtime”) to the forgotten (“Somebody Like You”) as often as Michael Jackson and Phil Collins. When they reunited in 1988 and got the Clive Davis treatment MTV received them like Julius Caesar back from Gaul and took to “Downtown Life” hard.

Rod Stewart

Get this, people: MTV took to this rascal rasper so helplessly that on the First Day it played him 16 times. For many Americans it was their first acquaintance with “Sailing,” “Oh God (I Wish I Was Home Tonight),” “You’re Insane,” and “She Won’t Dance With Me.” As noted earlier he had these videos ready to go. But through 1984’s “Baby Jane,” his second go at “Twistin’ the Night Away” for the Innerspace soundtrack in 1987, the Andy Taylor co-writes, the Unplugged concert where thinking about Rachel Hunter undid his professional cool (they soon divorced), and the The Three Musketeers theme with Sting and Bryan Adams called “All For Dough,” Rod Stewart filled MTV’s heart with gladness.