This Week In The 80’s: I Want My MTV!
Oh man, what a week this was in 1983! When I looked at the Top 40 list for this week I got excited because it’s chock full of songs that had GREAT videos. When I was thirteen, MTV had made it to my hometown but it wasn’t in my house (because we didn’t have full cable yet) so I was forced to watch MTV at friend’s houses when I could while I performed my own “I WANT MY MTV” campaign with my parents.
In its place, however, were a handful of local video shows and, of course, Friday Night Videos. The one I watched the most was from a station that we got out of Kansas City, KSHB, that aired a video show every night from 8:30pm to 9pm. I would make sure I was out of the shower every night in time to sit in my room and watch.I saw all of the great videos in this week’s countdown on that show. “Hungry Like The Wolf”, “Twilight Zone”, “Der Kommissar”, “Jeopardy”, “Come On Eileen”, “Stray Cat Strut”, “Down Under”, “Allentown”, “Little Red Corvette”, “She Blinded Me With Science”. Man, that’s a great set of songs right there. But wait…there’s more. The two songs that lit the fuse on the Michael Jackson rocket into stardom are on the chart this week, too: “Billy Jean” and “Beat It”.
I wanted that red jacket SO bad (I think everyone did). Jackson actually gave a similar jacket to all the VJ’s on MTV at the time. If JJ Jackson wasn’t cool enough already he was even more so when he wore that jacket on the air. Another song on the chart this week that has a terrific video is “Mr. Roboto” from Styx. The first time I saw it I was hypnotized. Looking back, it’s really kind of a “meh” video but when I was thirteen it was amazing. What a great time to be alive!
This Week In The 80’s is a weekly look at the Top 40 charts with Eric Vardeman. His Twitter handle is @ericvardeman.
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