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MTV Was Where We Went for Rockin’ Christmas Music in the 1980s
Here’s a blast from your past
Earlier this week I wrote a piece about the Christmas song that always kicks off the season for me. While writing that article, I listened to a number of my favorite Christmas songs, and I realized that several have something in common: they were all in heavy rotation back when MTV was new and actually playing videos.
For those who don’t remember the glorious days of the early and mid-1980s, understand that we left MTV playing in the background the way people do with Spotify today. Long before YouTube was a thing (hell, before the Internet was a thing), seeing your favorite bands playing your favorite songs onscreen was a novel thing, and MTV took full advantage of this during the holidays by combining rock artists with Christmas music.
Christmas has always been at least partly about nostalgia, and the songs below will trigger some serious nostalgia for many of you. And because the passage of time does this, some of are now considered “classics” in their own right.
“Christmas is the Time to Say I Love You” — Billy Squier (1981). Yes, it’s unbelievably cheesy, but it features both the sadly-forgotten Billy Squier and all five of the original MTV VJs: Alan Hunter, J.J. Jackson, Nina Blackwood, Mark Goodman, and…
