He Said/She Said: R.I.P. TRL
Rachel: So, MTV's Total Request Live is set to end its 10-year run, airing its final episode this Friday and a good-bye bash on November 16. In honor of the long-running request show, Rhapsody's Rock editor, Nate Cavalieri, and our Pop editor (that would be yours truly, Rachel Devitt) decided to have a little conversation about its legacy, which I, poptimist that I am, think is fairly significant. Nate is a bit more cynical, however. And off we go.
OK, yes, one of TRL's most significant "gifts" to the world has been Carson Daly (seriously, can we regift that one?), but I also think the show has carved out -- and deserves -- a special place in music history. It's been host to lots of important pop cultural events: the beginnings of the boy band phenomenon; Mariah's popsicle-laden meltdown/striptease; the first official report of Britney Spears's split from K-Fed. For a good chunk of its run, TRL was an important barometer of popular culture. Not to mention it's been one of the only places you can actually see, uh, music videos on the music video network (even if they aren't full clips).
Nate: Rachel, if I wake up on Christmas morning to find a wobbling refrigerator box that stinks of Axe body spray, I'm re-regifting Carson right back to you. I'll go along for the ride that TRL deserves a special place in the annals of pop culture, but, at the risk of coming off like a curmudgeonly fishing buddy of Walter Matthau, the cancellation of the show was a mercy killing after so many years of TRL hobbling along like a crippled old nag. Sure, it made waves during its short and juicy peak, but, like the cast of twits that dominated its charts – the thrill was quickly gone. Its place in the pop-culture scrap heap is somewhere near the Star Trek franchise – enormously popular, increasingly wretched and ultimately unwatchable. As for it being the only place on MTV to see actual music videos, sure, maybe if the video was number one. But if it wasn't number one, they only played part of it! I know but slogging through an entire three-minute video is rough, but, sigh, I want the M back in MTV!
Rachel: Look, I love videos and I do wish MTV showed more of them. But I think there's got to be a reason (besides profit margins) that MTV keeps moving away from the videos, and that reason is that the kids actually want their Lauren Conrads and their Tila Tequilas -- AND that they're getting their video fix elsewhere (i.e., the Interwebs). Which brings me back to TRL and what we really need to consider here: its legacy, rather than its moldy, Axe-stanky corpse. Yes, TRL eventually got as boring as Deep Space Nine and as unpopular (and maybe unprofitable) as Star Trek: Nemesis, but let's add another layer or two to that analogy. First, they are making a new JJ Abrams-helmed Star Trek with a hot new cast so ye olde Enterprise ain't dead yet. Similarly, although TRL itself hasn't aged so well, the music video program format was apparently successful enough to convince MTV to continue something like it with FNMTV. Second, like the Star Trek franchise, which helped pave the way for today's fancier, prettier, wittier sci-fi (The Next Generation+Internet=Dr. Horrible perhaps?), TRL needs to be given credit for its role as a kind of bridge between the Dick Clark-style teen dance-a-thon hit parades of yore and today's MySpace-and-YouTube-and-filesharing, "America Votes!" model of audience participation in audio-visual pop culture. Sure, it was a corporate gimmick, but I think fans found it exciting to feel like they could really kind of take the music industry in their own hands, an idea that's fueled the hands-on audiences of American Idol and the artist-making potential of sites like MySpace. The irony, of course, is that in helping to pave the way for even more participatory models of popular culture, TRL signed its own death warrant.
Nate: Wait a second -- you want to give Carson & Co. credit for the magic stuff that has always made fan participation key to pop music? What about Showtime at the Apollo or Star Search or the good ole phone-in request to the local DJ? TRL had some role in the America-Votes-MySpace-YouTube-and-filesharing revolution, but its death by the same movement wasn't like Frankenstein killing Dr. Frankenstein – it was a minor part in a chaotic digital media revolution which is still steamrolling just about every element of the traditional music industry (including our relevance as critics), making it something of a bridge to nowhere. My fundamental beef with TRL was that the game was always rigged – the choices on the countdown ballot weren't determined by fans, and eventually they gave up even pretending it was democratic thing – incorporating ca-ca like ringtones to pick the winner. Even if you, me, J.J., Shatner, Matthau and a bazillion of our pals voted for Weird Al, he would be unlikely to dethrone T.I. or Pink. Bummer! In that respect, the show really represented the ultimate corporate gimmick – merely pretending that our vote mattered. At least Simon got all pissed and wanted to rip some heads off chickens when America voted off Daughtry! That's democracy!
Rachel: Nate, what model of democracy are you working with where the candidates aren't predetermined? What, did you vote for Nader? Or maybe write in Dennis Kucinich? (And P.S., I gotta say I'd vote for Pink or T.I. for both president and #1 video over Weird Al anyday, "White and Nerdy" or no.) I'll grant you that the foundation of the TRL bridge (and that was bridge, not engineer, remember) is more Wall Street-style corporatism than Main Street-friendly democracy. (It's still too soon for election references, right? That one hurt a little.) Although, frankly, the same could be said about all the examples we've given here. But yes, TRL's legacy is problematic and definitely not black-and-white, like all things MTV and, well, pop cultural.
Personally, I like a little ambiguity in my mainstream music history, so instead of disagreeing with you per se, I'm going to tell an equally ambiguous little story about my favorite TRL moment. In 2004, a network of Filipino American student associations, activist groups and artists from across the country staged this massive effort to make the Black Eyed Peas' "The Apl Song" the number one video on July 26 of that year. If you don't know it, "The Apl Song" was, at the time, maybe the only song ever by a mainstream American music group to contain Tagalog lyrics. The video (which the label wouldn't support) is this independently made, very cool, evocative docu-film that addresses the revocation of veteran benefits to Filipinos who fought for the U.S. in WWII (when the Philippines was an American colony). So, getting it on TRL at all would've been a total coup, but getting it on there on July 26, the anniversary of the induction of Filipino soldiers into the army in 1941, would be a bit of pretty bad-ass activism.
I'm sure you can guess at least part of what happened: the video did not hit number one, and it wasn't played on the show. So in some ways, this story proves your point about the fundamental problem with TRL's whole "democracy sells" ethic. BUT host Vanessa Minillo did give a shout-out to fans of "The APL Song" while the TRL cameras panned to the crowd outside the studio, who were singing the track and waving signs about equity for Filipino veterans. That brief moment gave the song, the video and this overlooked issued an unprecedented amount of mainstream attention – and TRL was really the only venue it would've been possible in at the time. So even if TRL is all corporate gimmick, no heart, the fans still find creative ways to avail themselves of its format, at least partially because it's a format that encourages fan participation.
I guess the moral of the story for both of us, then, is that TRL didn't age gracefully, but it had its moments in its youth. And it was at its best when fans and artists alike took its call to join in literally.
Nate: Carson Daly 2012!
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Rhapsody's week-by-week log of TRL Top 10s
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