VIDEO: David Bowie Made This Perfect Point about Racism in Music Back in 1983

David Bowie was always ahead of his time, as shown in a video clip from 1983 where he calls out MTV for “not playing black artists.” In the interview, unearthed by Indy100.com, Bowie compliments MTV as a “solid enterprise” but then says “I’m just floored by the fact that there are so few black artists featured on MTV. Why is that?”

When the interviewer – who appears to be employed by MTV – tells Bowie that MTV is trying to reach a target audience, Bowie quips “Well, that’s evident in the fact that the only few black artists that one does see are on at about 2:30 in the morning to around six. Very few are featured predominantly during the day. There seem to be a lot of black artists making very good music videos that I’m surprised aren’t on MTV.”

thinking about this 1983 interview where David Bowie point blank period asks MTV why they don’t play Black artists pic.twitter.com/H36PQhqrNA

— lauren milici (@motelsiren) June 11, 2020

When the interviewer tries to say that middle America would “be scared to death” of artists like Prince or a “string of other black faces” Bowie coldly replies “Isn’t that interesting.”

I can’t say if he’s right or wrong. This was before my time, and I can’t make any personal observations about it. My biggest takeaway here is how Bowie isn’t scared to go there AT ALL! And he didn’t make these comments to a third party, but called out MTV right to their faces on their own cameras! This guy was awesome!