The First Music Video on MTV Was Prophetic

At one minute past midnight on August 1, 1981, the fledgling cable channel MTV launched with footage of the Apollo 11 moon landing, followed by a declaration: "Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll." The very first musical broadcast to follow was not an arbitrary pick, but a deliberate and powerful mission statement. The chosen song, "Video Killed the Radio Star" by British synth-pop duo The Buggles, perfectly encapsulated the technological revolution the network was about to trigger. The song itself, released two years prior, was a nostalgic look at how television usurped radio's cultural dominance.

Prior to MTV's arrival, the music industry was an almost exclusively auditory world