Reminiscent of this past spring’s intentionally vague, possibly cephalopod-created O Music Awards, MTV has announced its next maddeningly amorphous branding effort with a pointlessly cryptic name: MTV Iggy hopes to “bring global artists into the U.S.” through its new online hub and a weekly broadcast of The MTV Iggy Show, which will spotlight new artists in far-flung genres ranging from Norwegian black metal to Brazilian baile funk to, say, Japan’s famous crying-schoolgirl-being-squeezed-to-death-by-giant-squid-set-to-Casio-beats-pop. Which is all well and good—and most importantly, part of the network’s attempt to “extend our music strategy,” which they swear it still has.
But if you’re expecting an explanation of why it’s called “MTV Iggy,” update your mind-ware and embrace new modalities, or something, because MTV apparently feels no need to have something so old-fashioned as a “reason.” It’s just part of the anything-goes semiotics of modern culture, where a “hub for global music and trends” bears a name most closely associated with a shirtless ex-heroin addict smearing peanut butter on his chest. Or perhaps it’s also an allusion to Iggy Pop’s prescient appraisal of the global village in 1990, where he astutely observed that, no matter our address, we all live in one giant “Butt Town.”