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Comment by tomhoward | Hacker News Reader

Strangely enough, Australian artists were uniquely well-prepared for the emergence of MTV.

There was a national Saturday night pop music show called Countdown [1], that ran from 1974, featuring live performances and music videos, so Australian bands had nearly a decade head start to develop the art of music video.

This was a major factor in the USA success of INXS, Men at Work, AC/DC and Olivia Newton-John, as they'd started out in the late 70s, and when MTV started, they already had great music videos in the can and were well placed to make more.

When most videos were just of the group on a studio stage performing the song (e.g., Dire Straits' Sultans of Swing [2]), INXS and other bands of the time had arthouse filmmakers like Richard Lowenstein [3] doing much more creative work.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countdown_(Australian_TV_progr...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_7qkRwcMFc

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lowenstein

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This is a pretty hot take. INXS had no MTV visibility until around 4 or 5 years after the channel started, by which time, plenty of artists had done "creative work". AC/DC was popular, but they pretty much ONLY released straight performance videos. Contrast them with Van Halen, who also initially released concert videos, although they recognized the power of the medium and focused on David Lee Roth's crazy leg kicks and Eddie's solos to make extremely watchable videos... and later pivoted to classic studio videos like Hot For Teacher. Olivia Newton-John's enormous popularity was due to Grease, not MTV. If anything, despite her one big hit (Physical), her career under-performed, compared to other female solo acts of her era (Madonna, Cyndi Lauper).

And then you top it off by naming Dire Straits as an example of "just performing the song" when ultimately, that exact band released perhaps the most iconic and unforgettable video of all time.

Sure, AC/DC wasn’t such a great example; I added that as an afterthought. And yep, ONJ already had US success - but she was able to hit the ground running with cool videos when MTV started, and she’d been big on Countdown for a few years before Grease happened.

But the point holds up well for Men at Work, INXS and also Split Enz.

INXS’s first US chart success came in 1983 with Shabooh Shoobah, that was recorded in 1982. The video for The One Thing [1], though low-budget, was very much not a filmed performance of the song, whereas the Van Halen videos I can find from that era were (though of course Van Halen would have been fast to catch up, innovators that there were). Then in 1983 they released Original Sin [2], which was produced by Nile Rodgers and had Daryl Hall singing backing vocals, so they were already in the big league by then. The albums The Swing (1984) and Listen Like Thieves (1985) all charged well in the US, thanks in big part to cool videos and MTV airplay.

Split Enz was one of the very first bands shown on MTV, with History Never Repeats [3]. They originated from New Zealand but were active in Australia and appeared on Countdown a lot, and thus had cool videos ready to go.

As for Dire Straits, the whole reason I mentioned the pre-MTV track Sultans of Swing was for its contrast with their work after MTV was established.

[1] https://youtu.be/XJyKTNdPL5s

[2] https://youtu.be/PTULqzrhBWA

[3] https://youtu.be/tzuJXqgsiSM

Split Enz? I mean, ok, but I'll take Talking Heads if we're comparing bands "well-prepared for the emergence of MTV." Once In a Lifetime was released in 1980. Enough said.

Men At Work made a terrific song in Down Under, and an excellent video. Wish we'd heard more from Colin Hay.

INXS is a fine band, but hardly pioneers of music videos, and despite what you wrote, were virtually invisible on MTV until 1985 and really didn't hit their stride until the Kick album in 1987. Given that MTV launched in 1981, INXS does not bolster your initial statement that "Australian artists were uniquely well-prepared for the emergence of MTV." To suggest that Van Halen needed to "catch up" is absurd, given that 1984 was released in, you guessed it, 1984. You also seem to think performance videos are inferior to concept videos... Van Halen's greatest strength as a band was their performances. Check out Unchained... insanely great from DLR's first leap to the massive wall of speakers, to the fans enthusiasm, to lighting Alex's gong on fire at the end. Impossible to watch without wanting to go see them live.

> Wish we'd heard more from Colin Hay.

Colin Hay is amazing and still touring. His show is a mixture and songs and storytelling. He has some good stories about the crazy times during Men At Work's peak.

Just in the last half-hour he appeared on our TV screen here in Australia as part of an Olympics retrospective – gave a spoken tribute to the Australian team and belted out an acoustic rendition of Down Under. Never gets old.

OK, you're trying to refute my assertions by interpreting my comments as (a) portraying these acts as having been dominant on MTV from the start, and (b) dismissing US acts like Van Halen as being behind and bad at video, and suggesting that there were zero US acts making concept videos then. I'm doing neither, and I'm certainly not dissing Van Halen, or performance videos! I'd only point out that Van Halen's videos in 1981 for So This Is Love [1] and Unchained [2] were very basic compared to the ones they started making from 1982 and particularly from 1984, after MTV got up and running. But I'm not making value judgements about any of it, I'm just commenting on an interesting thing that was going on in Australia in the years before MTV started.

What I'm really pointing out is that these emerging Australian/NZ acts only got any MTV airplay at all because they were already quite adept in the art of music video, and were well positioned to take advantage of this new platform, which is surprising for a region so small, remote, and not normally known for cultural innovation.

In the case of Split Enz, they are in the very video we're talking about – twice. They were the 10th act ever played on MTV. They wouldn't have been there if they didn't have good videos already made. Several of their later videos also earned airplay on MTV, and their successor band Crowded House built on this to achieve some major US chart success in 86-87.

Re. Men at Work, their profile on Allmusic states "Their funny, irreverent videos became MTV favorites, helping send "Who Can It Be Now?" and "Down Under" to number one."

INXS may not have seemed very visible on MTV in the early days to you (I assume you're basing these arguments on your own recollections), but they were absolutely there, and there's a direct path from their first appearances in 82-83 to the huge success of Kick a few years later. Of 1982/3's The One Thing, Wikipedia [3] (sourced from their 2005 autobiography) says "The music video was their first video to air on the fledgling MTV and went into high rotation on the channel, which added to the chart success of the single in the US." (That track made it to #30 in the Billboard Hot 100 and #2 on Billboard Top Tracks).

If you use Google Books to search for "MTV" in that autobiography [4], you can read how their management was very deliberate and strategic in leveraging their existing repertoire of music videos to get on MTV soon after it launched, to tour the US extensively off the back of the profile they were building via MTV, and ride that all the way to the top with Kick only four years later.

I'm not insisting that INXS's early videos are masterpieces - clearly they're not. But they were a continuation of a trend that had been building in Australia since 1974, and the band was surrounded by people who understood the format and the industry trends very well by then, so when MTV arrived they were good to go.

But also, from reading about Countdown [5] now, I'm reminded it wasn't just about AU/NZ acts getting their start. Countdown was a platform where several US/European acts found early success, leading to later signings and/or chart success in the bigger markets. Blondie, Abba, Meatloaf, John Mellencamp and Bob Scaggs are some of the acts that found success in Australia earlier than elsewhere, thanks to Countdown, and presumably it helped at least some of them learn about the music video medium earlier than others. Talking Heads appeared live on Countdown in 1981, and Once In a Lifetime charted much better in Australia than in the US. Indeed, one of Van Halen's first ever TV interviews was for Countdown, filmed in London in 1978 [6].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfxG7BRn7xs

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojNrj-sWfpk

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_One_Thing_(song)

[4] https://books.google.com.au/books?redir_esc=y&id=MxTMEwwCIK8...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countdown_(Australian_TV_progr...

[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ymyADifQtA

Your best argument would have been to point out that Video Killed The Radio Star, Bette Davis Eyes, Young Turks, Total Eclipse of the Heart, Gypsy, Hungry Like The Wolf and Rio -- all very early MTV hits -- were all directed by Australian Russell Mulcahy.

> sourced from their 2005 autobiography

you do realize, right, that you can't accept the band's own authorized biography (i.e. propaganda) as a reliable source for how popular or successful they were?

> OK, you're trying to refute my assertions by interpreting my comments as (a) and (b)

No, no, no. I'm not interpreting, I'm not twisting, or inferring. You stated that Aussies were "uniquely well-prepared." You said that. UNIQUELY. You ARE saying that Australians were ready while others were not -- that's what "uniquely" means, literally. You also said "most videos were just of the group on a studio stage," which isn't remotely true.

Lastly, I call myself out for being petty and pedantic. Arguing the merits of this band or that band is ultimately futile, as is getting in a debate about something meant to entertain. But given the origins of my username, there's a certain obligation to set the facts straight here :)

For the record:

- That's not what I meant by uniquely. By unique I was referring to Countdown, which was unique for its format, its popularity, and for its influence, which is why several of the world's biggest acts since the 70s-80s hold Countdown in such affection, and regard its host Molly Meldrum as a pioneer and a friend. Nobody else has mentioned any primetime shows that played a lot of music video clips, in the US or anywhere else in the world, any where near as early as Countdown. The earliest I can find in the US is Video Concert Hall from 1978/9, but that didn't seem to have great prominence. The Wikipedia page on Music Video [1], in the section "1974–1980: Beginnings of music television" names Countdown and its rival show, Sounds, in the very first sentence. (I wasn't thinking of Sounds as I'm not old enough to remember it well and it's not as widely reminisced about here, but it was part of the same ecosystem). You helpfully mention Russell Mulcahy - who got his start producing music videos for Sounds. So the very first song ever played on MTV has a direct link back to the music shows that started in Australia in 1974. None of this is to say that no other acts in the world were at all well-prepared, obviously. It was just a different kind of preparation. And yep it's boring/lame to fixate on a strict definition of single word used in an obviously hand-wavy comment at the start of the thread, but that notwithstanding, it's clearly an incorrect interpretation of what I meant, particularly given my later comments.

- We're at the point of debating the interpretation of the word "most", which is a sure sign it's time to walk away, but another commenter made the effort to go through the first twelve clips in this MTV video to compare styles and artist origins [2]. I have no problem conceding that UK acts were also doing more artistic video work, due to Top of the Pops running a long time, even if most of that program's content was live performances.

- INXS's Billboard hits from 1983 and 1985/86 are there for us all to see in the historical records [3]. But it's "propaganda" for the band to recount that airplay on MTV helped them get there? OK then. Let's hear from Alan Hunter [4], who was an MTV VJ at the time: 'Beginning in 1982, he recalls VJs “being called into meetings with executives, who told us there was an arrangement between Atlantic and the network. We were going to see if MTV could break a band.” INXS, he says, served as a guinea pig, and indeed, heavy video rotation of its debut U.S. single, “The One Thing,” in 1983, helped drive the song to No. 30 on the Hot 100.'

Finally, I have learned a huge amount from this discussion, so thanks for your part in that.

And you should look up some videos of Countdown on YouTube. It really was awesome :)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_video

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28111528

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INXS_discography#Singles

[4] https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/magazine-feature/800...

Note that INXS also trotted out the "filmed performance" video for Don't Change from Shabooh Shoobah and was one of, if not the, first hit for the band internationally.

We're talking about trends not absolutes!

The first INXS video that got regular play on MTV was The One Thing, which was a concept video.

Their other early videos up to and including Don't Change were mostly live performance, though they all used more interesting locations and effects than other videos around that time.

But they really hit their straps with the videos they made in 1983 and 1984 for The Swing, some in Japan with Yasuhiko Yamamoto, and the others with Richard Lowenstein, who had been doing music videos for Australian acts since about 1979.

Sultans came 3-4 years before MTV and ~7 years before "money for nothing" but it's a funny example artist to choose, I agree. "Money for nothing" was an early iconic video and interesting early use of CG.

Yeah I chose it because it was such a contrast with Money for Nothing, illustrating how things changed with MTV.

There's a more iconic "video" than Subterranean Homesick Blues?

Here's the first 12 videos they played. It's a mix of American and "foreign" (mostly UK) bands, but it's interesting to compare the different styles. The UK (and NZ) videos are slick, artistically produced music videos in the modern style we'd recognise today. But the US ones are mostly just simple recordings of the bands performing live. Did the US just not have the concept of music videos before MTV came along?

  The Buggles (UK)
  Pat Benatar (USA)
  Rod Stewart (UK)
  The Who (UK)
  Ph.D. (UK)
  The Pretenders (UK, but the singer was American)
  Todd Rundgren (USA)
  Styx (USA)
  Robin Lane & The Chartbusters (USA)
  Split Enz (New Zealand)
  38 Special (USA)
  Rod Stewart (again!) (UK)

There were music videos on US TV before MTV. Night Flight was on Weekends around midnight.

Night Flight was on Weekends around midnight

I guess the point is that Countdown in Australia and Top of the Pops in the UK were prime time and very mainstream.

In Australia then there were only four TV channels (with no subscription TV), and Countdown on Saturday evening was the thing that most kids/teenagers watched, in many cases with their parents. And without even many music radio stations operating, it was a primary way people discovered new music, and it was a hugely influential program.

A lot of artists we remember as the biggest bands of the late 70s and 80s – e.g., Blondie, ABBA, John Mellencamp, Meat Loaf, Boz Scaggs and Cyndi Lauper – had their first chart success anywhere in the world in Australia, thanks to being played on Countdown. Politicians would go on there when campaigning. Prince Charles even appeared in a famously bad interview.

Wasn't Top of The Pops all film of the bands in a studio live/miming-over-a-recording, though? I don't see how that would provide a head-start for producing music videos...

> Wasn't Top of The Pops all film of the bands in a studio live/miming-over-a-recording, though?

Not at all. There were videos being shown at least as far back as 1979 (around when I can vaguely remember first seeing the show). From a cursory search, here's a Thin Lizzy video from June that year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnkHDtqpETE&t=905s

I don't know! If it was, it strengthens my point.

Others seemed to be trying to refute my original comments by saying that Top of the Pops had been running for years before Countdown, but if it was just showing mimed live performances rather than concept videos, then my original assertion that AU/NZ had a head start is solid after all.

Edit: As a sibling commenter pointed out, a video Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody was shown in 1975, and The Beatles had already made the Yellow Submarine movie, so yep, artists in the UK were certainly experimenting with the medium.

But it seems both the UK and Australia were a bit ahead of music video being a big thing in the US.

Yes, but they also played music videos:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_of_the_Pops#Music_videos

HBO also aired videos periodically between movies, prior to MTV's existence.

> the US ones are mostly just simple recordings of the bands performing live

"The band has to do a concert, let's record the live album and the music video at the same time. Three birds with the same stone!" -- Producer, probably

I actually just looked this up as I was curious of what preceded MTV (I wondered if it was a chicken and egg problem. Did MTV have to convince bands to createmusic videos?). The answer seems to be that Australia had been innovators in this space and the US was just catching up to the music video concept, so there were probably less US bands with music videos ready for the launch of MTV.

The Monkees did a music video or two in each episode, from the late 60s.

I remember it all quite clearly as a kid. It was the first time I heard "Brass In Pocket" by the Pretenders which is still such a great hit single and the best of that first two hours. It became the first song that I associated with the video right from the beginning.

I saw INXS in Cardiff in 1990ish, always been a fan of AC/DC - never saw them live though. I remember M@W's iconic "(I come from a land) Down Under" absolutely smashing it out of the park on the UK's Top of the Pops.

I think you'll find that one or two other bands produced videos as well as their music:

The Beatles did Yellow Submarine and a few other tunes back in the day - Sgt Peppers is quite well thought of too. The Who did Pinball wizard and the like. Sir Cliff Richard did pretty much everything, with and without the Shadows! The Strolling Bones, err Rolling Stones ran out one or two tunes and a few decent vids. Duran Duran were a bit later. David Bowie managed to keep a tune and a look. Queen have a few fans.

Why do you need to single out Australian artists? There is no need to get all chauvinistic. Music is universal. I am a fan of AC/DC, Bach, Motorhead, Judas Priest, Deep Purple, Beethoven, Iron Maiden, Rachmaninov, Black Sabbath, Kylie, that bloke wot wrote Finlandia and rather a lot more.

Not intending to chauvinistic/nationalistic! Most of my favorite artists these days are non-Australian. I was just pointing out a notable historical phenomenon. As someone else pointed out, UK had Top of the Pops from the 60s, hence a lot of the UK acts also doing artistic videos, whereas US artists were generally just doing recorded live performances at the beginning.

> "There was a national Saturday night pop music show called Countdown [1], that ran from 1974"

... which was surely inspired by the BBC's "Top Of The Pops", which began in 1964:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_of_the_Pops

Right, and as another commenter pointed out, the UK artists shown at the start of MTV were also doing more artistic videos, whereas US acts tended to do more straight filmed performances.

When I was late teens early 20's I didn't want to go out, I wanted to stay home and watch RAGE!

I'd only sleep once the started the countdown in the early hours of the morning.

RAGE was a great way to discover new music - basically a mix of JJJ Unearthed (video edition) along with new US and UK indie videos.

I really loved the guest programming as well.

Agree. It was how a lot of us Aussies would learn the iconic songs that inspired bands and there was a lot of commonality despite the resulting bands being very different. Its how we knew about The Pixies way before 'that movie' came out, and if you watched Rage guest programmed more than twice, chances are you found out who The Smiths were.

The Rage programmers were great, MTV in comparison had a lot of excitement but more production and less music, and it didn't help that our local MTV in Australia was hosted by Richard Wilkins...

Rage was no-nonsense exposure to music, MTV was more about the hype, although Public Enemy did get broadcast on both.

Music videos can be a great artform, but we're probably slowly losing them thanks to digital consumption diversity and attention deficit surplus which was ironically heavily encouraged by MTV's fast and furious editing style.

While I see others disagreeing with this, I do find it really interesting and think that this in an interesting angle to dive into—how musicians in other countries prepared for MTV without even realizing it.

It’s worth noting that Olivia Newton-John was well-known to American audiences thanks to Grease and the fact that she already had a longstanding music career in the U.S. by the time MTV came along, but certainly it might have helped with the production values on “Physical.”

Also had country tunes in the 70s and Xanadu in 80.

The same MTV effect is credited with boosting the US success of UK New Wave and synthpop acts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_British_Invasion .

Conversely, as other have pointed out, the advent of MTV wasn't such great news if you happened to be a black performer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTV#Breaking_the_'color_barrie...

> When most videos were just of the group on a studio stage performing the song [..] other bands of the time had arthouse filmmakers [..] doing much more creative work.

As a teen, this made me consider same-song-performance-but-on-video artists as lazy and cheap, and single-handedly fueled my appreciation for Australian bands. Didn't know they pioneered the concept.

Also, RAGE is the longest (still) running music TV show in the world

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rage_(TV_program)

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