ON… MTV NOSTALGIA

Contributing editor and Radio 1 DJ Clara Amfo reflects on the joy of Nineties music videos

Some time during my first or second year of secondary school, on a random week night, two men knocked on the door of our family home asking to speak to ‘the television owner of the house’. I bellowed for my dad. He came downstairs to greet these strangers, who introduced themselves as Harry and Gary (yes, really). The reason for their visit? To let our family know why we needed more than just the five channels we already had. They performed their sales routine perfectly. I, of course, was completely in favour, trying to persuade my dad that it would be great for him as a way to keep up with his beloved current affairs – when really all I wanted was the music channels. Back then, in the mid-Nineties, having cable was one of the holy grails of coolness. Only a handful of girls in my class had it at the time – and I would never turn down an invitation to their houses.

Harry and Gary’s pitch was indeed successful, and from the minute I had access to The Box, MTV and MTV Base, homework dramatically dropped down my list of after-school priorities. If performance TV shows like Top of the Pops and CD:UK were my joy, then music videos were my obsession. Everybody likes to believe they lived through a golden era of pop culture, but in the Nineties, there were some real sweet spots that make some of today’s offerings appear pedestrian by comparison. Bruno Mars and Cardi B’s video for the Finesse remix, a glorious homage to Nineties American TV show In Living

Color, was made with good reason. Back then, I would spend hours watching music videos on rotation, studying dance routines and trying to copy the looks of my favourite artists. Sister Act 2era Lauryn Hill was one of the reasons I started braiding my hair, which I got away with, but wearing super-baggy jeans to emulate Aaliyah and All Saints when my hips hadn’t fully developed was not the wave.

Music-video chat and emulation was the standard bonding experience with friends and siblings. My younger brother Chris and I would wait around for whatever artists we could affix to. One of our faves was the singer Brandy and her baby brother Ray J (yeah, that one from Kim K tape fame), and, in our heads, the living room would become whatever cool LA dance studio or house that the singing siblings inhabited in the Best Friend video. Looking back, I don’t think I truly appreciated how good it felt to see ourselves!

Then there was Britney Spears. When she burst onto the scene with Baby One More Time, it was mine and my school friends’ absolute everything. We could be in the kitchen, with the telly on loud next door, and if we heard that infamous foot and pencil tap, we would run into the living room to devour every ‘baybuh’. When it came to that final scene in the basketball court, we would flail our arms with purpose to that Max Martin beat and be totally out of breath by the end. Yes, looking back, that whole Lolita schoolgirl aesthetic was wildly inappropriate, but we were schoolgirls ourselves, so our enjoyment of it was wholly innocent.

It’s no surprise that the period was also considered a golden age within the music industry. ‘Nothing compares to music videos from the Nineties,’ says Mabel’s manager Radha Medar. ‘Six-figure videos were very normal back then, and sometimes budgets would be in the millions, which made artists’ ideas pretty limitless.’ Directors such as Hype Williams, who directed TLC’s No Scrubs, and Joseph Kahn, who did Brandy & Monica’s The Boy Is Mine, became celebrities in their own right.

But if music videos entertain and sell records, they can also have a powerful impact and provide space for sociopolitical commentary. From Jamiroquai’s lament at the modern world in Virtual Insanity to the Spice Girls running amok in a hotel promoting sisterhood, and TLC’s mini movies about the danger of unsafe sex in Waterfalls, it’s all been covered. Missy Elliott’s 1997 video for The Rain, with its saturated colours and cameos from Diddy and Lil’ Kim, was everything I didn’t know I needed at the time – but as a teenage girl, it made an important mark. Directed by Hype Williams, it made me feel excited and included, as she celebrated all the things that made her different and unique. Her body shape, bright outfits, the size of her lips were all exaggerated with a fisheye lens. She was one of hip-hop’s weirdos who proudly offered an alternative perception of blackness. Music videos might not dominate pop culture in the way they did, but you can still see their power in action. This year, Benny Blanco and Calvin Harris released a heart-wrenching version of their song I Found

You with an accompanying video showing the plight of a Honduran woman called Nilda trying to enter America with her son to escape violence. And you can see Missy’s influence in artists such as Nicki Minaj and Janelle Monáe. Monáe’s video for Pynk was a playful yet political declaration of her pansexuality, where she gave us those vulva trousers with her mate Tessa Thompson making a beautiful clitoris.

I still live for music videos. As a BBC Radio 1 host, I’m lucky enough to consume them as part of my job, sharing the excitement with my listeners. The Nineties may be gone, but I am absolutely here for its continual celebration. So if you ever want to join in for a nostalgia trip, you can catch me lip-syncing to Aaliyah on Instagram, hips now fully formed.

Clara Amfo is an ELLE contributing editor

“I WOULD SPEND hours WATCHING MUSIC VIDEOS on ROTATION, STUDYING DANCE ROUTINES ”