MTV Panders To The “Remember When MTV Showed Music Videos” Crowd With Throwback Video Music Awards Category

noah | August 4, 2009 1:30 pm

Perhaps realizing that a good chunk of the people who still care about its brand wouldn’t know a 3OH!3 from a GaGa, MTV has added a new, retro-tastic category to this year’s Video Music Awards: Best Video That Should Have Won A Moonman, in which an overlooked clip from years gone by gets its space-statue due. (I do wonder if the presentation of said award will be shown on VH1, if only because it can then be blown out into an hour-long special about Loving The Videos That Lost At The Video Music Awards or somesuch.) There are 10 clips up for this honor, and they hail from eras as long-ago as MTV’s earliest days and as recent as the YouTube Age. My biases in this category are probably given away by the above screen grab, but you might think* differently! BEST VIDEO (THAT SHOULD HAVE WON A MOONMAN) Beastie Boys: “Sabotage” Bjork: “Human Behavior” Dr Dre: “Nuthin’ But A ‘G’ Thang” Foo Fighters: “Everlong” George Michael: “Freedom ‘90″ OK Go: “Here It Goes Again” Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers: “Into The Great Wide Open” Radiohead: “Karma Police” David Lee Roth: “California Girls” U2: “Where The Streets Have No Name” I would like to call BS on OK Go being in this category, since that video’s ascent was not really MTV-related. If anything, it should get some sort of lifetime achievement award for Best Evidence That MTV Wasn’t The Only Game In Town When It Came To Pumping Up Videos’ Popularity? Also, surely I’m not the only person who thinks that “Just” is the superior Radiohead video—it was nominated for Breakthrough Video in 1996, but lost to the Smashing Pumpkins’ “Tonight Tonight.” Regardless of my personal preferences, though, something tells me that Radiohead’s going to take this—and by “something” I mean the “democratic” aspect of the proceedings, ahem. Earlier: 2009 Video Music Awards Nominations * Just in case you were wondering, the Cars clip of that name is ineligible, since it won the inaugural Video Of The Year award.