Gerry Rafferty — Bring It All Home

JUL 01 1980 · 12:00

Gerry Rafferty — Bring It All Home (1980) Era: Early MTV Era (1980–1981) - Pre-launch animated promo produced for the UK market, debuting as the first animated video aired on MTV on its inaugural broadcast day of August 1, 1981. Exceptionally high. This video occupies a unique and verifiable position in music video history as the first animated clip aired on MTV, giving it primary-source status for researchers studying both the origins of MTV programming and the evolution of animation as a music video language. The unresolved director attribution makes it an active research gap of scholarly interest. Combined with its connection to a major artist at a career inflection point and its AIR Montserrat recording provenance, this artifact merits Tier 1 preservation priority. Context: Released in 1980 as the lead single from Snakes and Ladders — Gerry Rafferty's fourth solo album following the global commercial peak of City to City (1978) — 'Bring It All Home' arrived at a transitional moment in both Rafferty's career and the broader music video landscape. The animated format was a deliberate creative choice that sidestepped the conventional performance clip paradigm, aligning the video with Rafferty's well-documented discomfort with celebrity and personal exposure. The video's visual language — foggy London streets, isolated figures, amber warmth — directly mirrors Rafferty's lyrical themes of longing, displacement, and domestic yearning that defined his post-Baker Street output. Its status as the first animated video on MTV (August 1, 1981) gives it an outsized historical footprint relative to its modest chart performance (UK #54, US #54 Billboard Hot 100), representing a proof-of-concept for animation as a legitimate music video language at the very dawn of the MTV era. Director notes: Produced circa 1980 as a promotional clip for the single 'Bring It All Home' from the album Snakes and Ladders (EMI/United Artists). The video is fully animated, with no live-action performance footage. Discogs credits identify Animation City as the animation production entity and BilBo for illustration; Hugh Murphy and Gerry Rafferty are listed as producers. The video aired as the 55th video on MTV's first broadcast day, August 1, 1981, making it the first animated music video ever aired on MTV. Multiple credible sources (Through the Shattered Lens, Gold Radio) confirm the animated format but no director name has surfaced in any catalogued source. The 'Through the Shattered Lens' blog, which systematically documents MTV Day One videos, explicitly lists the director as unknown.