In the earliest days ofMTV, few songs were more inescapable thanDevos fractured New Wave classic Whip It.
Today, another Devo track dominates MTVs airwaves.
(Whip It has four times as many YouTube views and nearly six times as many Spotify streams.)
Rick Kosick/MTV/Viacom /Everett Collection; Warner Bros. Television/Everett Collection; Sonja Flemming/CBS/Everett Collection
Its ironic and kind of funny, Greenspan adds.
[The videos] were subversive, they didnt like them and wouldnt play them anymore.
Now Uncontrollable Urge is easily the most-played song on MTV, so [Devo] wins.
Its also proven incredibly reliable for BMG, Devos publishing company.
Uncontrollable Urge is a unique case in the little-discussed but potentially highly lucrative business of theme songs.
I dont want to be gauche and specific about it either, but its been life-changing.
The Big Bang Theoryabsolutely changed everything for me, Robertson adds.
Its been like having a number one hit multiple times a year, every year for the past decade.
Its the gift that keeps on giving.
The Big Bang Theory, Robertson says, dwarfed One Week and made it look like an insignificant thing.
We make records we like that are interesting to us.
Weve got no one to impress anymore but ourselves.
Robertson is one of several songwriters and composers whove hit the jackpot getting their music on popular shows.
As one industry executive quipped, Its him and Taylor Swift.)
My quarterly payment was literally 10 times more than Id ever gotten before, he says.
He released Hold Em a song built around a funk drum break and triumphant trumpet stabs back in 2011.
The one that makes it could end up sitting there for 10 years just like this one did.
Its changed a lot of things; its a blessing.
This song is maybe 40 percent of my business now.
With pop writing, the stars have to align.
It has to be the right time, the right artist, the right A&R person.
Pop writing, youre just throwing a random jigsaw piece into a pile without a bigger picture.
Streaming services, meanwhile, pay on a per-stream basis.
And it takes significantly more streams to match the data pipe rates.
Now its worth nothing.
With streaming, theres no longer any scarcity.
Theres fewer people making money.
Its like having a number one hit multiple times a year, every year for the past decade.
She recalled how Mothersbaughs payment forRugratsback in the Nineties paid for their home.
They should pay the internet rates; theyre making money and theres no reason not to, Greenspan says.
This isnt like the days ofGilligans Islandanymore; theres not a lot of web connection television now.
The general malaise around the state of Hollywood isnt helpful, either.
As studios greenlight fewer projects, writers have less opportunities to get their work placed.
Theres also the matter of what becomes of syndication overall.
MTV stopped playing us but we came to the other side of the circle, Mothersbaugh says.
And now its maybe the most-played song ever on MTV.
