The original post: /r/television by /u/Ok_Falcon8456 on 2025-06-02 08:15:10.
Was watching the episode of Sister, Sister with the on-campus Next concert and it reminded me of something else current television is missing (esp in shows about and for teens/ya’s…which are also largely missing)–featured guest performances by real life musical artists. From Color Me Bad on the first season of Beverly Hills 90210 (“Things To Do On A Rainy Day”, it’s a really cute episode) to “Bad Romance”-era Gaga on Gossip Girl. One of the old Christmas episodes I try to watch every year is the Fresh Prince of Bel Air where Boyz II Men performed their version of “Silent Night” at Nicky’s Christmas Eve christening–and “Let It Snow” in an earlier scene (and when Bell Biv DeVoe shot a video in the Banks’ house! another of my favorites). I first heard what’s still one of my favorite 90s songs, “Tell Me”, when Groove Theory performed it on New York Undercover–in fact, musical performances every episode, by mainly black and other musicians of color, at the characters’ regular hangout club was part of that show’s schtick (being co-ep’d by Andre Harrell of Uptown Records certainly helped with that). The Bronze on Buffy The Vampire Slayer was also often used to showcase real life musical acts, and there’s that ending montage of “Tabula Rasa” with Michelle Branch singing “Goodbye To You”. For shows that took place during the high school years and made it to prom, at least 7 times out of 10 a current musical act would perform at it (probably my favorite Clana moment on Smallville is them dancing to Lifehouse–“You and Me”, of course–at senior prom). “Black shows”/shows with mostly black/of color casts especially leaned into this practice as a way of showing off even more of The Culture (esp shows starring black musicians-slash-actors, like Fresh Prince, Moesha, and The Jamie Foxx Show).
It was such an ingrained thing, which a Rolling Stone listicle pointed out had been going on since the 70s, and I think got especially intense in the 90s thru mid 2000s (likely bc that was the heyday of both the teen drama and the black sitcom), but now isn’t really a thing at all. On one hand I really have to wonder why, because it was such a reciprocal exchange between the record labels and the tv networks–the labels got promo and ideally a sales bump for their artist and the networks ideally got a ratings bump for their show, especially if the featured act was very in the zeitgeist at the time. Like I remember it was a big deal when Dawson’s Creek basically revolved an episode around a No Doubt concert–and this was Rock Steady-era, “Hey Baby”, “Hella Good”, “Underneath It All”, that No Doubt. The WB promo’d the hell outta the episode, and it was even titled “Spiderwebs”, after an earlier No Doubt song.
Music and television were so synergistic back then, and that’s really declined. I assume it’s largely due to the changes that have hit both industries in the last decade+, but still… And sure, maybe sometimes the bands’/singers’ appearances were more contrived than others (like P3 on Charmed seemingly becoming a thing mainly to promote acts), but whatever, even then, overall it was fun. And I feel like a lot of the fun has been sucked out of the television landscape these days, and that’s a shame, especially for younger viewers.