You’ve all probably been forced to bite your tongue while someone makes a joke about how MTV doesn’t play videos anymore. But if the channel should change the first letter of its acronym to anything, it’s probably “T,” for teenagers. MTV is a network of planned obsolescence, expecting—requiring!—its audience to outgrow it, and then hate it, before the new micro-generation comes in and its programs can cater to (or shape, you know) the kids’ desire to be entertained and to be different than everyone else. Like 50 Cent, MTV’s image depends on it being hated, in this case by non-teenagers; this makes actual teenagers think that they are doing something right. But this also means that the channel is inevitably going to go through some awkward public pubesences when they’ve aged out one generation but haven’t quite figured out the next. And that’s why it needed to take the extraordinarily symbolic step of doing a big blow-out final show for Total Request Live.
Last night, TRL said goodbye, and while doing so, it listed the ten most influential videos that hit it big on the program. Normally, a TRL list wouldn’t be worth the oaktag its cue cards were printed on, but surprisingly, whoever made the picks for this list pretty much nailed it; the ten songs truly did define the five-year span during which pop was ruled by MTV’s afternoon countdown show. You rarely see an era officially ending, and you almost never get the era to sum itself up so accurately, so now that we’re five years past TRL‘s hegemony, let’s try and figure out what it was like–and figure out what era we’re in now.
Tonight brings us the finale of MTV’s daily countdown show TRL, and MTV is pulling out a few stops to celebrate its end: A few live performances, a few interviews, a return to hosting duties by TRL OG Carson Daly. In some ways, this denouement was inevitable: The fizzy, sheeny, ever-expanding America that was epitomized by the rise of both the first Britney era and TRL some 10 years ago is all but over, what with a seemingly neverending bust ensuing and the concept of “popular music” being less popular than ever. But that doesn’t mean we can’t eulogize it, right? Full coverage begins after the jump.
