The young people have MTV and rock and roll. Why would they go to read poetry? Poetry belongs to the Stone Age. It awakens in us perceptions that go back to those times.
But MTV relishes its vestigial role as a star maker, so every year it puts all its clout into making the VMAs the biggest, splashiest, loudest show-biz extravaganza of the year, honoring all this music for existing, after a year of paying barely any attention to it.
My parents treat me like I'm 14. They make me clean my room and stuff like that. They're always like "I don't care what MTV says you are.".
MTV made a huge impact. Heavy rotation took you from selling 1m albums to 20m albums, and that meant a lot of dough.
I could not do the film Spinal Tap because I was already at MTV and it was occupying all my time.
I worked with three people who were doing video music shows before MTV.
When I auditioned for the show, I didn't realize it was an MTV production, which is going to make for really good tunes during the episodes, if nothing else.
I didn't want to get into acting. I was very happy doing MTV, it took up my time, I was content.
I think hip-hop is actually one of the most challenging things that's happened in music in a long time. The people who are in charge of what people see or hear are afraid. What you hear on top 40 or what you see on BET or MTV is not a fair representation of what is really going on...
They say it figures MTV would do such a vulgar, awful, horrible show and they completely miss that it's satirizing the people who watch MTV.
It was really weird, when this thing started, to hear lawyers and MTV people calling me and actually saying 'ButtHead.' People tried to avoid it too.
The MTV Video Awards were never about the video, but about the song. Most of the time it was just to glorify people for the wrong reason.
With MTV in the '80s, you made your album but then you needed to use any money you made to create a video - instead of being able to use that money to pay for you and your band to live on while you wrote new songs. So MTV upped the ante of looking for one hit. Conceptual bands who didn't have a hit were going to lose.
We just need the laws to change - it's 2012," JWoww said to MTV News. "I want to see my best friend get married, and I want to see everyone in every state be able to get married. It's their choice. It's not affecting our lives. So let them be equal. We want them to be able to experience life, and if they want to be miserable and married, let them be miserable and married like us.
It's really tough to make a name for yourself without compromising and without fitting yourself into a real specific mold. When I made the choice that I would be involved in every aspect of music and not necessarily make music for radio or MTV, I was saying, 'OK, this is me. You decide who it is.'
Anyone who's parading under a $100,00-plus video is not free from corporate. That's just the MTV advertising agency. I find them all to be just a bit of a sham.
I don't want to be on the radio. I don't want to be on Mtv.
I did my first nude scene in Mildred Pierce, and that was absolutely terrifying, but it was for an important part of the film and for a reason, and it's incredibly powerful. It's not gratuitous. I think the stuff they show on MTV is so much worse.
People got extremely comfortable with being able to turn on their television and see MTV say, "This guy's hot you should buy this record."
I think MTV put a huge dent in the songwriting craft.
MTV was such a great training for me. I did live interviews with everyone from Michael Jackson to Madonna.
I just got on Twitter because there was some MTV film blog that quoted me on something really innocuous that I supposedly said on Twitter before I was even on Twitter. So then I had to get on Twitter to say: 'This is me. I'm on Twitter. If there's somebody else saying that they're me on Twitter, they're not.'
See, because I played behind the scenes so much I already knew what to expect. So I started getting myself ready. I was creating work for myself to do. People were telling me to take a rest and saying "damn, you already acting like you going on MTV or something." In my mind I was because I knew it was what I'd have to do in the near future.
I think that what's perceived as punk out in shopping malls or in chain stores or on MTV has almost nothing to do with what punk is about.
I was working as a staff writer at Rolling Stone. I had a friend who worked at MTV, and she called me and said, "They're looking for VJs for this new channel. Do you want to try out?" I had zero TV experience, but I thought, "Well, what the hay."
