Behind the Music

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Behind The Music
Genre Documentary
Country of origin Flag of United States United States
No. of episodes 200
Production
Running time 60 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel VH1
Original run August 17, 1997 – March 2, 2006
Links
Official website
IMDb profile
TV.com summary
For the album by The Soundtrack of Our Lives, see Behind the Music (album).

Behind the Music is a television series on VH1 that ran from 1997 to 2003, and continues to air sporadically with new episodes.

Contents

[edit] Premise

Each show focuses on a musician or musical group, documenting both the successes of the musicians and the problems they faced during their careers. Except for the first two episodes (which focused on Milli Vanilli and M.C. Hammer), all programs are narrated by Jim Forbes. Forbes was later used to narrate the Milli Vanilli episode when it was modified to include the death of Rob Pilatus.

VH1's criterion for choosing the musicians who appear on the show is, in many cases, to profile those who are no longer in the music industry, or were moderately significant enough in rock history to appear on the series. This is as opposed to VH1's other biography show, VH1's Legends, which profiles musicians that have been very significant to the industry. However, there are some artists that were profiled on both Behind the Music and Legends, including Tina Turner, Metallica, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Elton John, John Lennon (although Behind The Music exclusively focused on the months and days leading to his murder in 1980) and Pink Floyd (although their Behind the Music was the US airing of the BBC produced documentary Behind The Wall in June of 2000). The Pink Floyd: Behind the Wall documentary focused on the making of the band's 1979 album The Wall, the concert shows that went with it and the making of Pink Floyd The Wall movie and features no narrator.

Another episode of Behind the Music on KISS was re-christened KISS: Behind the Makeup in July of 2001 (which was 2-hours in length). This featured Matt Pinfield, formerly of MTV's Headbanger's Ball, as narrator instead of Jim Forbes.

Behind the Music came to be after Paul Gallagher and George Moll produced a one-hour special entitled Dying in Vein which first aired on VH1 in December 1996. While Dying in Vein was a magazine style show, its approach to storytelling served as the prototype for Behind the Music.

A short-lived half-hour spinoff series titled BTM2 (short for "Behind the Music 2") chronicled the careers of newer upcoming artists.

There are some blogs that claim Stone Temple Pilots, Blink 182, and Toby Keith have episodes in production, but VH1 has not made any announcements.

[edit] Musicians

The following is a list of artists who have appeared in episodes of the series:
















The Saturday Night Live "More Cowbell" sketch was a fictitious episode profiling Blue Öyster Cult.

[edit] Other features

Other than musicians, some episodes were documentaries on musical events, films, and non-musicians who were influential on the music world. The following appeared in episodes of the series:

[edit] Technical data

  • alternate title: VH1's Behind the Music
  • runtime: 60-90 minutes per episode
  • series premiere: August 1997

[edit] Trivia

"Behind the Laughter" was an episode of The Simpsons that aired on the Fox network in 2000 and spoofed the style of the program. Jim Forbes also narrated this episode and many of the interstitial graphics used a style similar to Behind the Music.

The show was parodied on the South Park episode "Terrance and Phillip: Behind the Blow".

The show is also the base for the running parody Behind the Music that Sucks, which has been produced by Internet humor site Heavy.com since 1998.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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