The music videos that launched the second British invasion
In the early 1980s, the second British invasion that dominated the Billboard charts owed much of its pop explosion to the UK’s head start in the music video business.
The fact was, there was already an established tradition in the British music industry of the promotional film to accompany a single. As far back as the original British invasion 20 years earlier, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones issued high-quality videos with Michael Lindsay-Hogg in the director’s chair to be issued worldwide in place of their live appearance, coupled with the BBC’s Top of the Pops, creating a demand for pre-recorded inserts for bands too busy to head to the studio in person.
A precedent was set. Before long, all the day’s swinging groups across The Who, The Kinks, and Pink Floyd would create their own promos, with the trend spreading across the world to imitation shows like the Netherlands’ TopPop and Countdown in Australia. But it was the UK that stood as the music video capital, cemented when Queen recruited filmmaker Bruce Gowers to direct the effects-laden visual for 1975’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, the first time a single leaned on its video as a key promotional asset.
Such momentum swung into the new wave. Shaped by Top of the Pops’ heritage and Queen’s example, a whole generation of would-be pop stars burnished in punk’s smouldering crater would find themselves the subjects of lo-fi yet stylish promos befitting the insurgent air as the 1970s passed into the 1980s.
Videos became big business, the decade’s promo ball rolling with David Bowie’s big-budgeted ‘Ashes to Ashes’ – the most expensive video at the time, at over $2million in today’s money – surrounded by crucial film accompaniments for The Specials, The Human League, Adam & the Ants, and Soft Cell.
Where was America during this music video boom? Despite launching MTV in August 1981, the States’ promo vault was a lot barer than across the Atlantic, the day’s soft rock and MOR giants like REO Speedwagon and Toto issuing strictly perfunctory visual after-thoughts or mere live archive for the new cable channels’ insatiable maw for content.
It took MTV to look over to the Brits for their VJ rotations. Arriving ready-made and grippingly stylised, Duran Duran’s yachting around ‘Rio’, A Flock of Seagulls’ swoop and drop Barnet, and Billy Idol’s cartoon sneer all cemented themselves as the leading force of the MTV revolution and the broader British invasion.
It was the breakthrough that a cohort of ambitious UK filmmakers rode to international acclaim. Steve Barron would later help define MTV’s golden era, directing A-ha’s ‘Take on Me’ and Michael Jackson’s ‘Billie Jean’, 10cc’s Godley & Creme would dream up Herbie Hancock’s distinctive ‘Rockit’ along with Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s ‘Two Tribes’ Cold War lampoon, ‘Ashes to Ashes’ director would count an exhaustive amount of the US’ biggest names to his CV, and Julien Temple would jump from punk to The Rolling Stones during the their Undercover rebirth.
It was the UK videos that cemented the second British invasion’s pop conquering, a feat all too understood by Jackson, Madonna, and Prince, who were ready to shove the Brits out of the way as MTV’s bona fide superstars. Gifting one final hurrah, Barron would unleash the CGI-pioneering ‘Money for Nothing’ for Dire Straits, the debut for MTV’s European launch and the neon zenith of the cable network’s cultural command of the flashy and optic character of the 1980s.
