Satirical Disclaimer: This is a eulogy in the style of George Carlin — meaning there will be profanity, passion, and possibly the faint sound of God crying in 4/4 time. If you’re allergic to nostalgia, truth, or the word fuck, go back to your algorithm and let it feed you another influencer with an acoustic guitar and a ring light.
You ever notice how we don’t lose culture anymore — we just slowly smother it in ads until it forgets it was ever alive? Yeah. That’s what happened to MTV.
MTV used to be the altar of youth. The church of distortion and eyeliner. It was the first place music didn’t sound cool — it looked cool. Where we met our gods and goddesses in four-minute visions: Prince bathed in purple light, Kurt howling into the void, Madonna making the Vatican nervous, and David Lee Roth proving cocaine can, in fact, take human form.
We learned more about rebellion from Headbangers Ball than from any civics class. We learned heartbreak from Unplugged. We found our voices screaming along to TRL in our parents’ living rooms.
And now? The screen that taught us what passion looked like is going dark — not because it had to die, but because some corporate necromancer at Paramount-Skydance figured out it’s cheaper to watch teenagers cry on reality shows than to pay artists for their music videos.
That’s how art dies in America — not with a bang, but with a balance sheet.
Paramount didn’t just pull the plug. They dug up the corpse, sold tickets to the funeral, and then rented out the cemetery to a reboot of Jersey Shore.
Because reality TV costs less than reality itself.
See, music videos were expensive. They had lighting. Choreography. Art direction. Talent. You know, work.
Reality TV? That’s dirt-cheap.
You grab a ring light, a rental house, and six emotionally unstable narcissists. Add a soundtrack you don’t have to license, and boom — you’ve got “content.”
And people wonder why the culture’s gone flat.
You used to wait for a song to come on. You’d sit through commercials, VJs, countdowns, and promos — just for that one perfect hit. That anticipation was electric. It made the music sacred. Now you just bark a song name at your phone and skip it thirty seconds in. That’s not discovery. That’s dopamine farming.
MTV was where we learned to feel together. Now everyone’s got their own personal playlist, their own private concert, their own little algorithmic echo chamber. We traded community for convenience, and the bastards sold us the rope we hung it with.
But let’s not kid ourselves — MTV wasn’t perfect. It sold out plenty before it got sold off. It gave us heroes and hollow shells, in equal measure. But goddamn it, at least it tried.
It believed music could be more than noise — it could be vision.
And that’s worth mourning.
So here’s to the flicker of the logo. Here’s to the nights we stayed up for one more video.
Here’s to the sound of adolescence, rebellion, heartbreak, and the unfiltered joy of giving a damn.
MTV is gone.
The artists are still here — buried under subscriptions, sponsorships, and whatever algorithmic soup passes for discovery now. But they’re still here.
And maybe that’s what the real survivors do — they keep singing while the lights go out.
So fuck it — one last time, let’s hit play.
The Final Broadcast Playlists – at least, what they should be, and if Paramount disagrees? Fuck ‘em
🎧 MTV Music — The Mainline Farewell
- “Video Killed the Radio Star” – The Buggles
- “Billie Jean” – Michael Jackson
- “Like a Prayer” – Madonna
- “Rolling in the Deep” – Adele
- “Viva La Vida” – Coldplay
🕶 MTV 80s — Neon Afterglow
- “Take On Me” – a-ha
- “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” – Eurythmics
- “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” – Simple Minds
- “Livin’ on a Prayer” – Bon Jovi
- “Purple Rain” – Prince
📼 MTV 90s — The Last Great Roar
- “Smells Like Teen Spirit” – Nirvana
- “Waterfalls” – TLC
- “Creep” – Radiohead
- “My Name Is” – Eminem
- “Bitter Sweet Symphony” – The Verve
💃 Club MTV — Bassline and Strobe
- “Rhythm Is a Dancer” – SNAP!
- “One More Time” – Daft Punk
- “Toxic” – Britney Spears
- “Uptown Funk” – Mark Ronson ft. Bruno Mars
- “Titanium” – David Guetta ft. Sia
🎤 MTV Live — The Heartbeat Version
- “All Apologies” – Nirvana (Unplugged)
- “Tears in Heaven” – Eric Clapton (Unplugged)
- “Fix You” – Coldplay (Live 8)
- “American Idiot” – Green Day (Milton Keynes)
- “Where the Streets Have No Name” – U2 (Slane Castle)
Fade to static. The logo hums, flickers once, and dies.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” George would’ve said, “we’re out of music — and the assholes in charge didn’t even bother to rewind.”