Echos Of The Pop: Total Request Live (TRL)
By: Juan Nunez (Twitter)
MTV's Total Request Live was to Millenials what American Bandstand had been to their parents and grand parents. It served to elevate some of the biggest pop music superstars of the past 20 years. Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, Britney Spears, and Eminem are among the many pop-music acts that benefited from the audience of teenagers and young adults that the show provided.
Total Request Live launched Monday, September 14th, 1998, from MTV Studios in Time Square with host Carson Daly. The format of the show was a combination of two prior MTV shows that from the previous year. MTV Total Request, a top 10 count down based on viewer's call-in votes, and MTV Live, a live concert style program also broadcast from MTV Studios. TRL combined both of these shows into a one hour show five days a week with live performances and viewer-voted top 10 countdowns. The show's studio provided a striking setting of Times Square in the background, with hundreds of screaming teenagers inside the studio and outside at street level. Carson Daly was a Los Angeles DJ brought in initially to host Total Request.
The show was put on the map by the boy band rivalry of Backstreet Boys and NSYNC. Backstreet's I'll Never Break Your Heart was the first video to hold the number one spot in the top 10 countdowns. NSYNC's Tearin' Up My Heart became the second video to hold that spot. Those two songs traded the top spot between September 14 and November 17th, 1998. A system of retiring songs that spent too long on top was implemented. Ironically, the next two videos to hold the top spot were also Backstreet Boys' All I Have To Give, and NSYNC's (God Must Have Spent) A Little More Time On You. Late 1998 was the peak of the boy band era, and TRL was the foremost showcase for it.
But TRL was not only a showcase for traditional teen pop music. It featured videos from across the musical spectrum. The first video to hit the top spot by an act that wasn't Backstreet Boys or NSYNC was Korn with the video for Freak On A Leash. February 25th, 1999. Korn's break into pop stardom signified that Nu-Metal was the dominant Rock genre of the era. Limp Bizkit hit the TRL number 1 spot with multiple videos over the course of 1999 on their way to selling 7.6 million copies of their 1999 album Significant Other. Kid Rock, Blink-182, P.O.D., and Good Charlotte were among the many popular TRL rock bands.
Rap music was also on constant rotation on the TRL top 10. Eminem broke into the mainstream right as TRL peaked in popularity. The song and video for The Real Slim Shady encapsulating the era. Even directly referencing MTV, Carson Daly, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and Limp Bizkit's Fred Durts. The Real Slim Shady was locked in a two-month battle for the number one spot in the TRL Top 10 count down with NSYNC's It's Gonna Be Me in mid-2000. Other popular TRL rappers were Dr. Dre, Jay-Z, Missy Elliott, Ludacris, and Outcast.
Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and Mandy Moore represent the pop-princess category of TRL. While boy bands reigned supreme, pop-princesses weren't far behind in popularity. Britney, in particular, was a constant for TRL throughout the peak years of the show. She hosted the show a few times during her rise to the top. Her video for Baby One More Time topped the all-time top 10 countdowns for the original run of the show.
NSYNC
Like all things in popular culture, Total Request Live ran its course. The show peaked in popularity in 1999-2000, and slowly lost steam as the years went on. Carson Daly left the show in 2003. In 2006, the show became the longest-running live MTV show ever. May 22nd, 2007, the show celebrated its 2000th episode. By the time the show was canceled later that year, it was the third longest-running MTV show behind only The Real World and 120 Minutes.
The TRL concept lived on in various forms. It had international spin-offs in countries like Italy, UK, France, and Brazil. In the USA, the show was rebooted in 2017, but it failed to gain traction before being canceled again in less than a year. The TRL brand continues to be reused to this day via shows with different formats. For example, 2018's Total Request Late Night. It was a half-hour late-night talk show that was canceled after a short run. While MTV tries to remain relevant in a post-Youtube world, likely, the late 90's-early 2000's magic of TRL will never be captured again.
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