Since the dawn of television, music has seamlessly used the medium to connect with new audiences. Whether it was on talk shows or variety formats such as The Milton Berle Show, The Dean Martin Show, or The Johnny Cash Show (and, thankfully, the music was usually far more exciting than the programme titles), or in serialised productions like The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet orThe Monkees, music and television have always been a match made in heaven. Later, MTV elevated this union to unprecedented heights, launching the careers of countless new singing sensations and raising a whole generation of fans for who music was as much a televisual media as it was an audio experience.

By the early 2000s, talent shows such as Pop Idol, The X-Factor and, to a much lesser extent, The Voice, were the best places to catch the next generation of ‘talent’ on television. The X-Factor’s viewership peaked in the UK in 2010, with 19.4 million people tuning in to watch Matt Cardle crowned the winner. In the age of TikTok, streaming, DIY artists and bedroom pop-stars, it now seems quite quaint that a new singer could get their breakthrough from a medium as antiquated as a talent show or variety performance on the TV.

Elvis Presley (1957)

Elvis Presley burst onto the scene in 1956 like a bolt of lightning from the blue. With an otherworldly name, look and sound, no one had seen or heard anything like him before, and there would never be another like him again.

There is a misconception that Elvis made his television debut on The Ed Sullivan Show, but his first time in front of the cameras was actually for The Dorsey Brothers’ nationally broadcast show, The Dorsey Stage Show, where he shocked the world into life with his singing and swinging dance moves. Following further appearances from Elvis and his hips on The Milton Berle and The Steve Allen Shows, which shocked the nation, Ed Sullivan banned Presley from ever appearing on his own show.

When Elvis became too popular to refuse, Sullivan backed down from this position, and Elvis appeared not once but three times as a musical guest on the show in 1957. Worried about the reaction to his evocative and provocative dance moves and raw sexual charisma, though, Sullivan and the studio only let the rock and roll sensation appear on the condition that he only be filmed from the waist up. Happy with any glimpse of him that they could get, it is estimated that a staggering 82.6% of the American TV audience tuned in to catch Elvis’ first Ed Sullivan appearance.

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