graham: mtv starts to get pressure from cbs records, which was michael jackson s label. rock and roll in itself really was the thing that broke a lot of rules. and when you re very successful, you try to make your own rules occasionally. graham: as the story goes, cbs essentially said, we will pull every other artist we have on mtv if you don t play this. they had to be essentially blackmailed into doing it. it doesn t matter who s wrong or right just beat it he was the artist that mtv really needed. they didn t know they needed him, but boy, when we started to see the michael jackson videos, it was just unbelievable. and no one s going to. questlove: then there s the domino effect. suddenly you see prince videos from warner brothers do the same thing. so tonight i m going to party like it s 1999 pauley: prince wasn t just materializing out of nowhere. where was he before this video was done? prince was a huge star on black radio stations.
take my hand, we ll make it i swear bon jovi comes in with a huge record. pour some sugar on me def leppard, fantastic record. pour some sugar on me and that brings to bring that kind of music back. pour your sugar on me nancy wilson: at the end of the 80s everybody came to the same conclusion simultaneously: something new needs to happen here, and it s got to be real-sounding. more garage, less produced. i need an. peresman: there was music that was bubbling out of places like portland and seattle and bands like nirvana that weren t looking to fit in to what was being played on mtv or radio. i can see you every night eventually radio and mtv came to them.
she acts like a different attitude that no one else has. she dresses how she wants, acts how she wants, sings how she wants, she does what she wants. i think her appeal is that she is feminine, she is herself, she is sexual, but she s strong! she s an individual woman. rodgers: madonna understood the mtv phenomenon. she understood the vibe and the look and the sound. it all came together with her. everyone underestimates you. you keep giving them little surprises. if they get you all in one glance, then what s going to make them look again? ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, like a virgin feels so good inside peresman: when madonna sang like a virgin and started rolling around on the ground, people thought it was a career- ending moment for her. oh oh oh oh oh in this wedding dress, rolling around on the floor. it kind of stopped everybody in their tracks,
boy george: do you really want to hurt me? is a good song. it s a song that old people like and young people like. so i think the proof is in the pudding. buy it and eat it. majewski: mtv actually met with duran duran s managers and said, we re looking for kind of like james bond videos, on location, and their managers are the ones that went to the band members and said, look, we really need to up the ante with these clips. we need to give this channel something they ve never seen before. moving on the floor now, babe you re a bird of paradise man: there are some that have accused your videos of being soft porn. well, excuuuuse me! [ laughter ] we like to call them tastefully smutty. her name is rio and she dances on the sand just like that river twisting through the dusty land