Back to the original topic. First of all, lots of unattractive guys were all over MTV:Phil Collins, Billy Joel, ZZ Top, etc. You just had to do flashy videos that glossed over your homliness. What really killed Cross was
–changes in Top 40 between 1980 and 1983. The “disco sucks” backlash in the early 80s meant pop radio was afraid to play anything linked to r&b. A lot of times you were hard pressed to tell the difference between easy listening and top 40 radio. Cross’ songs fit perfectly in this atmosphere. (It’s also the reason there were so many country crossovers in this era.) Well by '83 Michael Jackson and Duran Duran had brought rhythm based music back to top 40. Cross now stuck out like a sore thumb.
–He took four years between his first and second albums. That’s common today, but in the early 80s that was a easy recipe to be forgotten.
“Who Can It Be Now” hit #2 in Australia, which hardly seems like a minor hit.
In 1983, Men at Work’s album ‘Cargo’ hit #1 on the Australian chart and went triple platinum there.
Even better, it was a mistake. In the early days of MTV all of the segments were prerecorded, to minimize any issues. The planned order of of rotation was supposed to be Martha Quinn, Mark Goodman, JJ Jackson, Nina Blackwood and then Alan Hunter. Instead, the tapes were stacked backward and Alan Hunter ened up being the first VJ shown and “Video Killed the Radio Star” became the first video shown on MTV, despite it originally being planned as part of the *fifth *shift to be run.
If you listen to the old VJs on the Sirius 80’s channel they still give Alan shit about it to this day. 
Yes it does. It means that you were threadshitting. You came into a thread about American music stars just to tell us how bad we were for, get this, focusing on American music.
Go away.
This, this and three times this.
It is just a glib phrase that over the years far too much thought has been applied to.
I like the argument that it was payola that really influenced the popularity of American music, not MTV. There’s this weird dichotomy with pop music … all that energy the top performers put into being, or seeming to be, true to their or their fans’ ideals, and underneath it’s built on a truly sleazy foundation of payola and double-dealing. It’s no wonder the RIAA is the slimiest, most-hated organization in the arts.
i wish there was a syndicated question-and-answer newspaper column based out of melbourne that has since spawned a website complete with a forum discussing why the Hoodoo Gurus didn’t take off like AC/DC or INXS did and I can fly in and accuse them of being myopic and xenophobic.
seriously… how anyone would open an MTV thread and expect discussion of carib folk songs and indie laotian punk rock is just plain silly.
To address the OP, I don’t think Chris Cross was particularly ugly, though he certainly didn’t sell albums based on look. I do remember him being EVERYWHERE on the radio as a kid, and then he disappeared.
While MTV may have been available from 1981, I don’t think that many people had it. Remember the ads? “I want my MTV!” We had cable in '81 but aside from WGN, WTBS, and HBO, I don’t remember what else we had.
I think new romantic/British invasion stuff pretty much upended the AOR scene around '81 or so. Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, and the whole lot came on the scene soon after. Air Supply is something of an anomaly, as they were big back then.
Boo Boo Foo has a point about music discussions on this board generally, but I think it’s misdirected in this thread. Everyone who does these knows how I go off about how the term “one hit wonder” is almost always exclusively a US/North American concept and plenty of bands terms as such (number one example is Norway’s a-ha) are in fact anything but.
Really? Then me and some of my friends have decided that Australia’s taste must be in their arse.
I forgot about StrawMan, I loved that band.
Rick Astley had that really popular song…then his music video showed up and he was this skinny,nerdy,dorky white guy when previously everyone thought he was some amazing,sexy, large black man.
after his video came out…his career went down the drain.
Personally, I think the “MTV Effect” isn’t so much that it killed the careers of artists who weren’t photogenic (videogenic?), it’s more that the channel made HUGE stars of acts that might otherwise not have been nearly as popular, especially groups like ABC or Spandau Ballet, because they WERE incredibly video-friendly.
IOW, video didn’t kill the radio star – it made a whole bunch of new radio stars.
But the song never did.
What fresh hell is this??? I have an EAR WORM NOW, people!!
Right now the only thing I want to kill is the Buggles.
Just sayin.
Same here. Just an arbitrary assumption, because in fact I don’t have a clue about the lyrics.
I remember having a similar reaction when I first saw the lead singer of UB40. Whoa - not what I expected at all.
Yeah, I don’t think you needed good looks to make it in the MTV era, but you DID need to make interesting videos. Consider some of the biggest video acts in the 80’s:
ZZ Top - A bunch of old guys in beards
Meatloaf: A fat, very sweaty man.
Dire Straits: Massive MTV hits. Marc Knopfler is not exactly a cover model.
Aerosmith: A huge and ugly band on the skids, revitalized by MTV.
Heart: Video revived their career, even though they were already middle aged and somewhat overweight women who had to be shot through a Star Trek gauze filter. Same with Grace Slick and Starship.
There were artists like Herbie Hancock who didn’t even appear in their videos, or Peter Gabriel who wasn’t exactly going for sex appeal woth ‘Sledgehammer’. Robert Palmer had huge videos that had nothing to do with his own sex appeal, but rather that of his ‘backing band’ - a bunch of women in slightly see-through clothes and heavy makeup. There’s more than one way to get sex into a video if the band or singer isn’t all that hot.
I would argue that, due to sexism in the music industry, WOMEN generally needed to look good in the MTV era. There were a lot of knockouts in the first few years of MTV.
Men? No one much cared about looks. Age might have been a bigger factor? A lot of musicians are pretty ugly by mainstream standards (Moods like Jagger? Moobs like Meatloaf? ). If they put on a costume or slapped on some makeup no one much seemed to care. It was more about attitude. And seeming young or at least loud or energetic.
Christopher Cross? His music was just too bland for MTV. Versus new wave or metal it might not have appealed to younger generations. There were still other ways he could have made his mark and his Buggling off was not just due to radio staricide at the hands of Big Video.
Resubscribing to my own thread…
(BTW, the answer ‘Cross wasn’t on MTV because his music is so bland’ is still a positive affirmation that MTV negatively impacted his career, imho. It’s just a different reason.)
Ah, MTV. 39 years on the air, and 12 with videos! Video did not kill the radio star. MTV killed the video star.
I want MY MTV! But I’ve gotten over it. Martha Quinn must be a grandmother by now.