In the eight­ies, peo­ple lament­ed the atten­tion-span-short­en­ing “MTV-iza­tion” of visu­al cul­ture. By the mid-nineties, net­works were try­ing to fig­ure out how to get view­ers to sit through music videos at all. A solu­tion arrived in the form of Pop-Up Video, a pro­gram pitched by cre­ators Woody Thomp­son and Tad Low to VH1 when that much-less-cool MTV clone found itself strug­gling to stay car­ried by cable providers. It had an appeal­ing­ly low-bud­get con­cept: take exist­ing music videos, and spice them up with text bub­bles con­tain­ing facts about the artists, behind-the-scenes anec­dotes, and amus­ing (if semi-rel­e­vant) triv­ia.

“We got a lot of resis­tance from VH1. They owned Block­buster Video at the time, so they knew no one rent­ed for­eign films because no one want­ed to read the TV.” So recalls Low in a Bill­board inter­view about the his­to­ry of the show, which orig­i­nal­ly ran from 1996 to 2002 (with a brief revival in 2011 and 2012). Like many cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­na beloved of mil­len­ni­als, Pop-Up Video has received the oral-his­to­ry treat­ment more than once: Uproxx also did one a cou­ple years ear­li­er. These arti­cles are enter­tain­ing in the same way as Pop-Up Video itself, open­ing up the doors of the fac­to­ry and offer­ing a glimpse of how pop-cul­tur­al sausage gets made.

Launched well before the age of Wikipedia, Pop-Up Video required inten­sive research. That meant not just inter­net search­es, but phone calls to direc­tors, pro­duc­tion design­ers, hair­styl­ists, car­pen­ters, cater­ers, and any­one else who might have worked on a par­tic­u­lar music video (if not the musi­cians, few of whom knew how their videos were made, and even few­er of whom were will­ing to dish dirt on them­selves). These often com­pli­cat­ed, rushed, and oth­er­wise trou­bled pro­duc­tions tend­ed to pro­duce mem­o­rable sto­ries, which par­tic­i­pants turned out to be hap­py to tell years lat­er — not that the net­work or the artists’ man­age­ment were always hap­py with the results.

Also like many cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­na beloved of mil­len­ni­als, the show was sat­u­rat­ed with the famous­ly irrev­er­ent sen­si­bil­i­ty of Gen­er­a­tion X. Tasked with deliv­er­ing fun facts, its writ­ers did­n’t hes­i­tate to knock celebri­ties off their pedestals while they were at it, and with a sense of humor that came to be rec­og­nized as decep­tive­ly intel­li­gent. (Head writer Alan Cross has spo­ken of being inspired by Hunter S. Thomp­son, and Low by a favorite writer who made “exten­sive use of foot­notes,” which brings anoth­er three-ini­tial name to mind.) You can watch over 100 “popped” music videos on this Youtube playlist, with more at the Inter­net Archive. Alas, many have nev­er come avail­able online, but then, Pop-Up Video did make a virtue of ephemer­al­i­ty.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Com­plete His­to­ry of the Music Video: From the 1890s to Today

The 50 Great­est Music Videos of All Time, Ranked by AV Club

Watch the First Two Hours of MTV’s Inau­gur­al Broad­cast (August 1, 1981)

Revis­it Episodes of Liq­uid Tele­vi­sion, MTV’s 90s Show­case of Fun­ny, Irrev­er­ent & Bizarre Ani­ma­tion

How Rick Astley’s “Nev­er Gonna Give You Up” Went from 80s Pop Smash to Bas­tion of Inter­net Cul­ture: A Short Doc­u­men­tary

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas uses a cast of ama­teur child voice actors, deals with the theme of sea­son­al depres­sion, and cul­mi­nates in the recita­tion of a Bible verse, all to a jazz score. It was not, safe to say, the spe­cial that CBS had expect­ed, to say noth­ing of its spon­sor, the Coca-Cola Com­pa­ny. In all like­li­hood, it would have been can­celed, but see­ing as it had already been announced and pro­mot­ed (and in any case, was com­plet­ed only a few days before it was sched­uled to air), the show went on. In the event, not only did it please the view­ers of Amer­i­ca, it went on to become one of the most beloved pieces of Christ­mas ani­ma­tion — and that jazz score went on to become one of the most beloved Christ­mas albums.

In the new Dig­ging the Greats video above, bassist Bran­don Shaw breaks down some of the dis­tin­guish­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics of Vince Guaral­di’s score, with help from drum­mer Ryan Shaw (not just Bran­don’s broth­er, but also a musi­cian with his own direct con­nec­tion to Peanuts pro­duc­tions) and pianist Jon­té Moore.

“There’s beau­ty, because of the major 9 sound­ing, but there’s, like, this ten­sion,” Moore explains while play­ing the imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­niz­able chords of “Christ­mas­time Is Here.” “Some­thing’s maybe miss­ing: it could be peo­ple who have lost a loved one, or are maybe just tired of the hol­i­day sea­son, so they have this weight that they car­ry.” We’re a long way indeed from the insipid cheer of many a hol­i­day pro­duc­tion.

“Christ­mas­time Is Here” may be the sin­gle most influ­en­tial piece of A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas’ musi­cal lega­cy. But it’s best heard in the con­text of the whole sound­track, where it sounds of a piece with the “jazz arrange­ments of Christ­mas clas­sics,” as Shaw puts it, as well as with “Linus and Lucy,” the Peanuts theme song Guaral­di had pre­vi­ous­ly com­posed. This coher­ent aes­thet­ic and sen­si­bil­i­ty — the com­poser’s, of course, but also that of the world Charles Schulz cre­at­ed — goes a long way toward mak­ing the project not just a col­lec­tion of Christ­mas songs, but an endur­ing Christ­mas album: one that, over the next cou­ple of days, even those of us with­out enthu­si­asm for Christ­mas music in gen­er­al will be spin­ning as many times as we can get away with.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to Vince Guaral­di, the Jazz Com­pos­er Who Cre­at­ed the Best Christ­mas Album Ever, A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas

Enjoy Clas­sic Songs from A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas, Per­formed by Vince Guaral­di Trio Drum­mer Jer­ry Granel­li

How Inno­v­a­tive Jazz Pianist Vince Guaral­di Became the Com­pos­er of Beloved Char­lie Brown Music

Charles Schulz Draws Char­lie Brown in 45 Sec­onds and Exor­cis­es His Demons

The Endur­ing Appeal of Schulz’s Peanuts — Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast #116

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.