Why do I not care about music videos anymore

I grew up in the age of Toronto Rocks, Video Hits, Good Rockin' Tonite and finally Much Music. For anyone over the age of 30, you know that this was how we were introduced to the art of music videos.

Living outside of Toronto without cable, I did not often get to see Toronto Rocks, but I would always rush home to watch Video Hits on CBC around 5:30 and stayed up until 11:30 pm on Friday night to watch Good Rockin' Tonite with first Terry David Mulligan and later Stu Jeffries.

I used to be fascinated by them until I began to realize that they really serve no function other than to promote the artist. They are not really an art form representing the song. And like listening to pop radio, if the song is a hit it just gets played over and over. Whether the actual video is any good or not. And like Canadian pop radio, a certain percentage of the videos they would show would have to be Canadian (which meant endless Bryan Adams, Corey Hart and that awful Jane Sibbery video for Mimi On The Beach.

My Top 5 Favourite Videos
1. Cloudbusting (Kate Bush)
2. Dancing With Tears In My Eyes (Ultravox)
3. Tomorrow's Girls (Donald Fagan)
4. Ashes To Ashes (David Bowie)
5. Brilliant Disguise (Bruce Springsteen)

I'll be honest, other than the first two, I did not give that list much thought. I don't normally like performance videos and that Springsteen one is sort of a performance one. But it is shot in this stark kitchen with the camera slowly moving towards him as he sings the song and plays guitar. The contrast of the term brilliant disguise matched with the visual of him figuratively naked is really cool. There's a Queen video called The Miracle that first has these kids performing the song dressed like the members of Queen and then the real members show up at the end. I am making it sound cheesy, I actually thought it was kind of heartfelt.

Anyway, if you are in the mood to watch videos, the website pitchfork has posted a list of the 100 Awesome Music Videos with youtube links for each so you can check them out. As well, here is a another website featuring dozens of videos from the 80s.