Friday trivia: Billboard top 100 and more music fun
Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing" was the first video to be aired on MTV Europe in 1985. It won video of the year at the 1986 Video Music Awards. Credit: Screen grab, MTV.com
It's time to hop into our time machine and see what was happening this week in music history.
Monday, as we reported, was the 30th anniversary of MTV's maiden broadcast, but what we didn't tell you was that MTV Europe lauched on Aug. 1, 1987. Their first video was "Money for Nothing" by Dire Straits, which appropriately starts and ends with the line "I want my MTV," sung by Sting. That little ditty hit No. 1 on the the Billboard chart on Sept. 21, 1985. (That song also won video of the year at the 1986 VMAs.)
The very first No. 1 song on the Billboard Hot 100 chart was "Poor Little Fool," by Ricky Nelson, which also scored a place in history this week on Aug. 4, 1958.
And, even before there was such a chart, in 1953, "Dragnet" became the first TV show ever to score a hit record, when its theme song climbed to No. 3 on the pop charts. Look ahead to 2011, when just about every "Glee" episode spawns a top 10 entry (and they're all covers!), and you'll realize what an impact TV has come to have on popular music.
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