Every morning I pour myself a bowl of cereal and camp out in front of my laptop to read celebrity gossip, um, I mean, catch up on the overnight news. But today I went for a fasting blood test and decided to scarf down a Sausage McMuffin in front of my television. In-between the scary nun on EWTN and Pat Robertson on “The 700 Club,” I discovered something marvelous—VH1 was actually broadcasting music videos! Usually, I am greeted by shows like “I Love the 80’s” or another showing of Jesus Christ: Superstar when I fly by VH1 (which I just learned changed from “VH-1” to “VH1” in 2003) on my search for quality entertainment, but not today!
The first video featured Eminem, which made me think, “Man, I remember when VH1 would only play Amy Grant’s ‘Baby, Baby’ and Clapton’s ‘Tears From Heaven.’ We’ve definitely come a long way.” Next up was Safety Suit with a highly disturbing video involving a seedy hotel, a kissing couple, cash, and cops. Towards the end of the vignette, one-half of the kissing couple (the woman) ties up her lover, punches him in the face, and then kisses him goodbye as she grabs the bag full of cash on her way out. Um, I’m not sure if he’s sad about losing the girl or the money. But I wasn’t sad the video ended (even “Stay” is a good song).
Green Day’s “21 Guns” was incredible, and yes, it also involved guns and kissing people. Is there some sort of guns + kissing trend I’m not aware of? Billy Joe looked surprisingly fresh-faced (translation: “not hyped up on illicit narcotics”) still sporting his black eye-liner and boyish good looks.
Lately, I’ve found myself listening to a lot of Taylor Swift. I can’t help it! She’s infectiously cute and she’s a local girl! (True story: she grew up in Wyomissing, PA which is a mere 45 minutes from where I currently reside, but my parents lived in Wyomissing for a year [I was 20 mins away ]. Plus, the Gosselin Six were also born during this time, and yes, Jon and Kate lived in—you guessed it—Wyomissing!) I was wowed by the music video for “Love Story” on YouTube, and finally got a chance to catch the video for “You Belong With Me”. I adore her light-hearted typical love story music videos. It makes me miss the good ol’ days when music channels actually played music videos most of the time.
Look, I know I can scope out my favorite artists on YouTube, but it’s not the same. On YouTube, I generally only watch the videos of the artists I like, not musicians I’ve never heard of. But with VH1, I’ll give a new artist a shot, if only to get to the next music video, and sometimes I discover my newest favorite artist. And, honestly, I get a nostalgic feeling when I watch music videos broadcast on real music channels, like how I felt when I first saw Soul Asylum’s “Runaway Train” or Collective Soul’s “The World I Know” or Smashing Pumpkin’s “Tonight.” I remember what it was like to turn on VH-1 or MTV after school and do my homework during the insanely long commercial breaks. Video may have killed the radio star, but the influx of ridiculous programming on music channels definitely killed the video star.
Programming note: I’ve changed “Weird Video Wednesday” to “Weird Wednesday” because there is so much weirdness in the world, I need a whole day to write about it.
She is Beloved 