Thank you for the music...the song I'm singing...

The fact that MTV does not, indeed, play music anymore (unless you count about five minutes total during TRL - I don't, or the early morning hours - who's actually up that early?!) is not new. I think I started watching MTV with regularity sometime in middle school and by then I recall most of the programming being "The Real World", "Road Rules" and other similar shows. In the midst of all the protests from people, I usually would take MTV's side ... I liked watching "Beavis and Butthead" and "Daria", I didn't mind the lack of music at that point. "Vh1 is still on," I would remind people - yeah, if you don't mind healthy doses of Bryan Adams and Meatloaf mixed in with your at-least-two-years-old videos being played. But still.

Alas, now even Vh1 has stepped onto the dark side. I couldn't care less, honestly, because I hardly watch TV to begin with. But as far as I can see, their programming now involves Hulk Hogan, a group of incredibly pathetic women shaming their parents by trying to marry the hopelessly classless Flava Flav, and a bunch of fat celebrities competing to lose weight (and a lot of people will now step in and say 'hey! that's a good show!' - and yes, i agree, i like that show. but that's not my point, damn it.)

What I'm actually trying to get at in some roundabout way is .... what the HELL ever happened to Pop-Up video?!?!!

I think everyone remembers this show (especially Lisa Loeb's "Stay" and Mariah Carey's "Fantasy") and everyone should recognize its vast overlooking. I can't help but wonder if we haven't seen it in forever because videos are just unpoppable anymore. How many times can you pop a video portraying a rapper in a club/car show/studio/parking lot/random field with a bunch of half naked, big booty'd women, who are clearly only there because somebody is rapping, and that's what has to happen when somebody raps? With the dematerialization of boy bands coinciding with the maturing (i.e. whorification) of Britney, Christina* and the gang, pop hardly exists anymore and certainly very few videos go mainstream from that genre like they used to.

What does that leave us with? Nothing all that good, I'm sure. I don't need to watch television to be sure of that. Not to say there aren't some isolated cases of bands/artists that actually come up with good songs and videos, but probably not enough to make more than one or two episodes worth of pop-up videos.

So consider this my humble petition to the musicians of today ... please write better songs. And make better videos. Please. In honor of all those that have passed and moved on, who can no longer furnish pop-uppable videos but would like to see others who can and will follow in their footsteps. Make Mariah, Lisa, and the rest of the gang proud.

* christina is allowed to be a whore because she's actually talented.