What is a song that was outperformed by its music video?

I’m going to have to think about this one on my drive home, I will report back later. 

 

  Unfortunately, I have to answer that the first decade of MTV displayed hundreds of videos that fit the bill you propose here. It was said back then that not only were the songs greatly enhanced by their videos, it very quickly got to the point that no song would succeed commercially or even compete with other songs commercially unless it had a video.

  Many of very first videos were extremely rudimentary, some were even quite crude and amateurish, but as the competition for recognition and accolades increased, the quality of one’s video(s) has had to increase also. The videos and the production of videos became industries of their own, which in turn required new categories on awards ceremonies. With more awards and more types of awards dangled as bait, the music entertainment business kicked into high gear in response. More money was poured into the videos than the songs themselves, and as an extension of that, songs were being made to fit the videos that got aired with them, instead of the previous model of videos being made to fit the songs. Music fans buzzed more about the latest videos than they did about the music, the tune, the lyrics, the instrumentation, the sound, the singing, the artists, the producers, etc. 

  For those of us who were in our youth when MTV was born, it was fresh and new and exciting. Our 1980s were in a large way defined by music videos and music videos were greatly defined by the 1980s. So many of our favorite songs had videos that we knew both the song and the video just as well as each other. That’s why it’s hard to say which song or songs got outclassed by video. Lots of them were; more than 50% of songs that had videos (and that meant most songs period) were known more for the video than for the song alone.

  After its first decade, MTV began branching out to other ventures than just music videos 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Its new programming slowly crept further and further away from videos until one day, people openly speculated, “back when MTV used to play music videos”.  An entire generation slipped away from viewership, replaced by the next generation that appreciated the new formats. 

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This post was edited by Randy D at August 17, 2020 7:53 PM MDT

I thought of one!! I can’t believe this didn’t come immediately to my mind earlier... I can watch this on repeat for hours.

Absolutely everything by Daft Punk. Nobody would listen to it were it not for the fact that the videos are quite good, despite the music being monotonous.

I agree with Randy pretty much, but the obvious choice, to me, is "Thriller".