Carson, We Hardly Knew Ye: A Trubute to TRL

Kids, have you heard the news? TRL died today. That's right - after ten glorious years at the top of the business, the only program on MTV that bothers to show music videos anymore is leaving forever. In the age of late-night VH1, FUSE, and MUN2 (it's Spanish okay), America has just run out of love for TRL. How sad.

I know what you're asking yourself - why? And you're not alone; it's a question every warm-blooded American across the country is asking themselves right now. What sparked the tragic downfall of America's Greatest Countdown? Was it when Carson left? When N*Sync broke up? When Eminem lost his sense of humor? When Blink did that crappy "Miss You" Song?? God, I don't know. We'll never know, will we? And asking these questions will not bring our beloved TRL back. We, as a nation, have to let this one go.

Two things pop into mind upon hearing this news. One, I realize that 1998 was ten years ago. (Ughhh.) Two, I realize that TRL, despite its crass commercialism and questionable musical content, made me love music videos - and pop music in general - as an ever-developing teenager. I mean, the show started right when I hit the sixth grade, and peaked right smack dab in the middle of the seventh; boy bands, rap rock, irish girl pop (come on, B*Witched ruled) were all over my radar. Hell, I watched TRL before I even bothered listening to the radio when I went to sleep! That's gotta mean something, right??

Oh, sure, I stopped watching the show after I grew a couple balls my freshmen year of high school (I guess 9/11 changed everything... but not really). Carson Daly left, popular music turned from teen-pop confection to crunk and that "I Kissed A Girl" song, and I started listening to the Beatles. But for all intents and purposes, TRL was the most important music-based TV show in my formative years, and I will never forget it. Even when they only played like 30 seconds of a video, I still loved it!

Here's a few of my personal favorite popular TRL videos from back in the day. A warning: you're not gonna find much of anything past 2001 here.

Korn - Freak On A Leash

Say what you will about the song itself, this is one cool video. I've never been a Korn fan, and probably never will be one, but this video was one of the first to attract me to TRL. Not only is it a compelling mish-mash of animation and live-action, but it's got a part where there's a bullet, and you see the bullet go through shit in slow motion like the Matrix. My favorite part: the bullet narrowly misses a fat man cannonballin' it into a pool.

N*Sync - I Drive Myself Crazy



Boy bands always had great music videos - mostly 'cuz they had the money and the fame to pull it off. Hell, most of the success of late 90's boy bands could be directly connected to their success on TRL. My personal favorite has to be this one, featuring the members of N*Sync goofing around in a looney bin jaded by their past lovers. See, they were all materialistic and mean to their ladies, so they got dumped and went crazy and ended up in a mental institution - HENCE the video, HENCE the SONG! But then at the end they're all released for some unexplained reason, and their WOMEN end up replacing them! Ha ha! I have no idea how that makes any sense!

Sum 41 - Fat Lip



This, ladies and gentlemen, is the ultimate pop-punk cream dream. Kings of Rock Sum 41 play in the middle of a GEEEEEEI-GANTIC skatepark, with black-haired lip-pierced dumb teenagers moshin' around, skating in cardboard suits, riding around in shopping carts, shaving a girl's head - you name it, they're punkin' it. There's even a 13-year-old-lookin' kid getting macked-up on by some HOT CHICKS! Man, I wished I were him back in 2001. "Fat Lip" was already the most cartoonishly ridiculous pop-punk song ever recorded when it came out - all it needed was an even more ridiculous video.

Sugar Ray - When It's Over



I remember thinking when this song first came out, "Man, Sugar Ray are BACK!" It was mid-2001, two years after the Raymen graced us with such laid-back classics as "Every Morning" and "Someday" - and now here they were, with a bangin' new tune and a bangin' new video. The concept: the five Sugar Ray dudes can't think of a video for the song (how META!), so we get a glimpse of what each one wants to do. That's right - we get to peer straight into the minds of some of the early 2000's best pop musicians. After a bunch of weird detours, hunky lead singer Mark McGrath puts a stop to it all, saying "Why don't we do what's right for the SONG?" And they do - the rest of the video is just the band ridin' around on mopeds and partying down. And ain't that just what Sugar Ray's all about??

Come back to us, Shuggs. We miss you.


Eminem - The Real Slim Shady and Blink-182 - All The Small Things



Seriously, there are so many videos I haven't covered here it's embarrassing. It doesn't help that my white-boy instincts have tainted the legacy of Nelly, TLC, Jay Z, and numerous other hip-hop artists that deserve my prized recognition in this blog post. So I'll take the lazy way out and include the two most notable "joke" videos during TRL's peak - videos that perfectly encapsulated almost every aspect of TRL culture in the span of three minutes. While Blink-182 cheerfully parodied the videos for "I Want It That Way," "Someday," "Genie In A Bottle" and "Livin' La Vida Loca," Eminem thoroughly dissed weirder targets like Tom Green's inexplicably popular "The Bum Bum Song" and a bizarro love triangle between Fred Durst, Christina Aguilera and Carson Daly. Sure, they're completely dated - nobody that wasn't alive in 2000 is going to know just what the hell is going on in these things - but as pop-culture catch-alls, they pretty much work perfectly. It was videos like these that made my dumb teenager self watch TRL every single weekday.

Get ready to pull out those Kleenexes come this November, Requestophiles. I know it won't be easy.