Before Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” video, MTV had never shown videos by African-American artists. They only played music by white artists like The Clash, Blondie, Genesis, Duran Duran, Peter Gabriel, and Billy Idol. Michael Jackson wanted “Billie Jean” to premiere on MTV, so he asked Walter Yetnikoff, the president of Epic Records at the time, to make it happen. When MTV refused because Michael was black, Yetnikoff threatened to pull all Epic Records artists’ videos from the channel. This included popular artists like Cyndi Lauper, Billy Joel, Culture Club, and Wham!
MTV was about to go bankrupt and couldn’t afford to lose popular artists, so they finally agreed to air “Billie Jean.” The video was a huge success and boosted the channel’s ratings. Michael Jackson’s videos like Beat it, Billie Jean and Thriller helped save MTV. With this, Michael opened doors for African American artists like Whitney Houston, Prince, Janet Jackson and everyone else to this day and forever.
👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑MICHAEL
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