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Hans Zimmer

Who was the First Person to Be on an MTV Video in 1981?

The Music Television or MTV is an American cable channel that rose to popularity in the 1980s. It is the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group, which is part of Paramount Media Networks, a division of Paramount Global, and is based in New York City. The channel focused on the music industry and was quite a hit. But did you know who was the first person to appear on an MTV video back in 1981?

Oscar-winning composer Hans Zimmer appeared in the first video to air on MTV on August 1, 1981. He played the synthesizer for the Buggles. The Buggles’ most famous song is “Video Killed the Radio Star,” which they released in 1979.

Who is Hans Zimmer?

Zimmer was born in Frankfurt, West Germany, on September 12, 1957. He grew up in Königstein-Falkenstein, where he played the piano at home but only briefly took piano lessons because he disliked the discipline of formal lessons. Zimmer attended the Ecole D’Humanité, an international boarding school in the Swiss canton of Bern.

As a teenager, he relocated to London and attended Hurtwood House School. During his childhood, he was heavily influenced by Ennio Morricone’s film scores, citing Once Upon a Time in the West as the score that inspired him to become a film composer.

Zimmer claimed that he is Jewish in a speech at the 1999 Berlin Film Festival, and talked about his mother escaping World War II thanks to her evacuation from Germany to England in 1939.

Zimmer’s works are notable for fusing electronic music sounds with traditional orchestral arrangements. He has composed music for over 150 films since the 1980s. The Lion King, Gladiator, The Last Samurai, the Pirates of the Caribbean series, The Dark Knight trilogy, Inception, Interstellar, and Dunkirk are among his works.

Zimmer began his career in the United Kingdom before moving to the United States. He is the head of DreamWorks’ film music division and collaborates with other composers through his company, Remote Control Productions, formerly known as Media Ventures. His studio in Santa Monica, California, has a large selection of computer equipment and keyboards, allowing him to quickly create demo versions of film scores. (Source: IMDB)

The Hans Zimmer’s Awards and Honors

Zimmer has received numerous honors and awards, including the Max Steiner Film Music Achievement Award in Vienna, the National Board of Review’s Career Achievement Award for excellence in film music composition in 2003, the Palm Springs International Film Festival’s Frederick Loewe Award for Film Composing in 2003, the ASCAP Henry Mancini Award in 2003, and the Richard Kirk Career Achievement Award from the BMI Film Music Awards in 1996.

Zimmer was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in December 2010. He dedicated the award to his publicist and long-time friend Ronni Chasen, who was shot and killed in Beverly Hills the month before.

Zimmer was one of the inaugural recipients of the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication in 2016.

As of 2022, Zimmer had received twelve Academy Award nominations for his work, with two wins: the first for the 1994 film The Lion King at the 67th Academy Awards, and the second for the 2021 film Dune at the 94th Academy Awards. (Source: IMDB)

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