The Girl is Mine/I Just Cant Stop Lovin' You - Singles = No vids??

[SkyWalk]

Why isn't there no videos for The Girl is Mine or I Just Cant Stop Lovin' You? I mean out of ALL of MJ's albums apart from Thriller & BAD the debut single for these albums didn't have a video. Surely for the first single of a brand new album to promote it you would do some kind of video. Is there any reason why it wasn't done?

 

[Tony R]

It wasn't as important back then and also these singles were released for specific reasons.

TGIM - Obviously not the strongest song on the album and seems a strange choice as lead single. It was released because it was a duet between 2 of the world's biggest stars and they wanted to 'get it our of the way' before it was played to death leading to overkill before it finally was released. They also didn't want to take the focus off the main single e.g. If Billie Jean had've been released, stations would have focussed on TGIM as it was a a duet between Paul & Mike.

IJCSLY - Again, although a lovely ballad it doesn't measure up to many on the rest of the album. It was released to give Mike a slow burn back to the public eye. After so much furore with Thriller, Mike wanted to return slowly & steadily before blasting with the Bad video. The Thriller campaign ended with the Thriller video, the one that set the world alight and changed the face of music video forever. Mike wanted to return with everything that Thriller wasn't, a slow ballad with no video, just to prove that he didn't always need fireworks & tricks to make magic.

 

[DuranDuran]

The Girl Is Mine was released as a single first to get Michael played on pop radio in the States. After the "disco sucks" campaign, black performers rarely got airplay on Top 40 stations as they were considered disco music. That's why black acts (R&B) had to "cross over" to mainstream pop. At the time Mike was just considered a R&B act and R&B wasn't something that was taken seriously by the mainstream public. Paul was still popular at the time, so was a big help in getting that pop radio airplay. During that time, light rock and soft pop acts like Air Supply & Christopher Cross were big, so The Girl Is Mine fit in perfectly with that. As far as videos go, that wasn't a big thing then. MTV was just starting, so they hadn't yet killed the radio star, lol. Music videos have been made since the 1960s for some songs, but they were rarely shown. Before MTV, they were usually made to show in clubs & discos or as a cheap way to promote an act overseas without having to fly them everywhere which was costly.

 

[jemini515]

Thanks DuranDuran for that explanation!

 

[DuranDuran]

Thanks DuranDuran for that explanation!

You're welcome. People now just think that Mike was always the "King Of Pop", when that wasn't the case. They consider The Girl Is Mine a weak track and wonder why that was the 1st single. But younger people generally don't know what the music scene was like at the time. They don't know who Christopher Cross is. Once MTV became a hit, the late 70's/early 80's soft pop acts popularity died out, they generally weren't photogenic or had an image like a Billy Idol. The main MTV audience was younger than the one who bought the light rock records of acts like Styx and Air Supply. With MTV the image of an act became just as important and maybe moreso than the music. MTV didn't play R&B videos, which is why they refused to play Michael's videos at 1st until CBS threatened to pull all of their other acts like Bruce Springsteen & Journey off the station. Even after they started showing Mike's videos, MTV still ignored R&B for the most part, but they started showing black acts in heavy rotation who made pop/rock songs or dance music like Lionel Richie, Prince, the Bus Boys, Living Colour, Tina Turner, & Billy Ocean. But you couldn't see an act like Rene & Angela, Alexander O'Neal, Lakeside, or Klymaxx on there. So BET was created and they started the program Video Soul for the non-crossover R&B and funk acts. During the mid 80's, MTV created VH1, which originally was a channel for adult contemporary and soft pop videos like Kenny Rogers and Charlene.