Para-Music Television

It's not news that MTV hasn't involved much of the "M" in a while. Now of course, I love The Hills as much as anyone (I wish I was kidding) but its been a longstanding joke of the industry that you're never going to get video play because they never show videos earlier than 2AM.


That's why I was caught off guard when last Monday I kept hearing the band Paramore between the shows and during the commercials. It wasn't just once or twice, it was every single break and even existing commercials that had had other bed music previously. They had filmed special acoustic sets (in the forest...still not sure why) and even had band interviews and live footage collaged in the ads for their programming. Now this was pre-school starting and during the summer I miraculously manage to watch MTV pretty much all day if I'm home, so after about 7 hours, I found myself wondering what they were up to. I mentioned it to my roommate and how I figured it would make me hate them, but in fact, I found myself singing along and even to myself at certain points. For a long time I've believed in saturation when it comes to marketing a band, making sure everyone knows their name and they are constantly a point of discussion, but how much is too much? It almost felt like reverse subliminal messaging, reverse in the sense that it was completely and totally shameless.

I wasn't the only one who noticed this new "artists of the week" approach, and I find it almost a little sad that it should even cause any controversy at all that MTV is playing more music and openly recognizing bands as versus some faceless music supervision. Some people were left wondering "okay, so how much are they getting paid to play this all day?" I'm not going to make any speculation of payola, but is it possible that MTV is featuring them out of the sheer desire to play more music? Here they are, taking this very hot and upcoming band and interacting them with their viewers, not only with the music but by introducing them as people and yet something STILL feels funny about it. They've since moved on to another new artist of the week, Rodrigo y Gabriela, and now I've found myself fascinated to find out who will be next or why these artists in particular are chosen. I'd almost rather have several bands they feature and open things up a little more, but maybe they have the right idea. Maybe you just have to keep slapping people in the face with something to get them to listen. In this day and age where music is almost TOO accessible, maybe it's time that these bands are featured as people and artists and instead of, 'oh, well I haven't really listened to them', they're making it easy for you.

However, if by next week the featured artist is Nickelback, someone deserves a swift punch to the crotch.

Song of the Moment: "Lessons Learned" by Band of Annuals
www.myspace.com/bandofannuals