On a Friday night in September 1984, Diana Ross walked onto the stage at Radio City Music Hall in New York to pick up an award for her old friend Michael Jackson.
He was nowhere near the room.
It was the night of the very first MTV Video Music Awards. Comedian Dan Aykroyd and singer Bette Midler hosted, and Madonna rolled across the stage in a wedding dress. The video everybody had been talking about for nine months was up for six awards.
That video was “Thriller.” To get why the night mattered, you have to go back to a time when MTV barely played Black artists at all.
MTV went on the air on August 1, 1981. It showed music videos around the clock and quickly became the place where stars were made. But the channel called itself a rock station, and very few Black artists ever made it onto the screen.
Even David Bowie noticed. In 1983, he sat down with MTV host Mark Goodman and asked him about it, right there on camera.
David Bowie Criticizes MTV for Not Playing Videos by Black Artists
Then came “Billie Jean.”
By early 1983, the song was a smash on the radio, and Michael had a slick new video to go along with it, the one where the sidewalk tiles light up under his feet. MTV still wasn’t playing it.
Walter Yetnikoff ran Michael’s record company, CBS Records. According to Yetnikoff, he told MTV he’d pull every one of the company’s videos off the channel. MTV’s bosses have always told the story differently and say they loved the video and played it as soon as they could.
Either way, “Billie Jean” premiered on MTV on March 10, 1983. It became the first video by a Black artist to land in heavy rotation, which meant it played over and over, all day long.
Michael Jackson – Billie Jean
After that, things moved fast, and Michael’s videos turned into events. On December 2, 1983, MTV premiered “Thriller,” an almost 14-minute short film directed by John Landis and packed with dancing zombies. People still copy that dance at Halloween parties.
So when the first MTV awards rolled around, “Thriller” was the big favorite with six nominations.
It didn’t win them all. Video of the Year went to the rock band The Cars for “You Might Think,” and jazz star Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit” took home five awards, more than anybody else that night.
“Thriller” won three. It took Best Overall Performance and Best Choreography, plus the Viewer’s Choice award, which was voted on by fans watching at home.
That’s where Diana Ross came in. She’d known Michael since he was a little boy singing with his brothers in the Jackson 5 at Motown, and she accepted all three awards for him.
The trophy she held up was brand new that year. It’s a little silver astronaut standing on the moon with an MTV flag, and people call it the Moonman.
The clip of her heading up to get it is still out there, and it’s worth a look.