First Country Music Video Played On MTV Was Dwight Yoakam

October 24, 2025 11:18 am Published by

Before YouTube, TikTok, and endless scrolling, there was MTV.

If you wanted to watch music videos, it was the only channel that mattered.

MTV launched on August 1st, 1981, but it took five years before a country music video finally got a spot.

Do you know what the first country video was? Dwight Yoakam’s “Honky Tonk Man” in 1986.

Some people will fight this and say that the first country video on MTV was actually Juice Newton’s 1981 hit “Angel of the Morning”.

It reached number 22 on the country chart that year,  but that feels a lot more pop than country. Juice even received a Grammy nomination in the pop category that year.

So, we’re giving the title to Dwight Yoakam.

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This post was written by Cheryl Johnstone