Musical artists who would not have made w/o MTV/VH1

Cafe Society
1

The title says it all.
A Flock of Seagulls
Hootie and the Blowfish (thanks, VH1, for playing “Hold My Hand” 8 billion times)
Duran Duran
Cyndi Lauper (and I like Cyndi)
Michael Jackson & Madonna (would not have nearly as popular without videos, IMHO)

Feel free to add.

2

Made “it”, dammit.

3

Spice Girls!!!
Numerous image-laden boy bands and hip-hop stars.
I’m happy for them that they’ve reached success.

4

Britney
Christina Aguilera
All the various boy bands - N’Sync, Backstreet, 98* etc

Although video is a huge factor these days, and really drives exposure of an artist.
Even some of my favorites - Counting Crows, R.E.M., Peter Gabriel, U2 - they all got a huge push from successful video campaigns. I like to think that all of those artists would still have been quite successful, but there’s no denying certain videos - ‘Mr. Jones’, for example, really helped drive the Crows’ career to the next level.

I’m just sayin’ is all…

5

Eminem would have made it without the surreal videos. But his videos definitely put him over the top.

6

I think it’s safe to say that O-Town owes their career (such as it is) to MTV.
I’d post a link, but everything I can find is either in running for the crappiest fan site ever made or refuses to load.

7

Hard to argue with an opinion, but consider that Michael Jackson had huge amounts of success as a solo artist well before MTV came out. I’d agree that he’d have been less exposed, but think he’d have been very nearly as popular.

It’s a hard comparison to make, because when you remove music videos, you are removing one of the major streams of exposure for 80s musical acts. I think Duran Duran’s music stood on its own nicely, but who knows how it would have gone over without MTV?

…

All that said, I think that Weird Al Yankovic’s career benefitted greatly from MTV. He is one of the classic cases of music videos making the career, IMHO. Not meaning that as a slam, because I love the guy’s work. Weird Al just did a great job taking advantage of the media available. Still, I can’t imagine him being anywhere near as famous had he never made a video.

8

To be fair, the first season of “Making the band” aired on ABC.