Music is very often guided by the age we live in and Brian admits that because we are living in a time of economic boom, we have a lot of happy pop music with artists like The Backstreet Boys and Britany Spears. People today do not need to release their anger through music. Several years ago, people were drawn to Kurt Cobain because they were able to associate with what he was singing about. Now fewer people are in that state of turmoil. Each artist produces his/her music for a reason, sometimes it is to release anger, other times to rejoice in a successful era, and singer/song writers very often express their feelings of sadness in their music.

Today, unlike any other time in musical history where the musical artist typically stood alone, there are many artists involved in the production of a musical piece. Similar to a television show, music today is not created by just one person, many talents come together to make it work. Each part of that musical production, however, demonstrates an artist's creativity and originality, even if a songwriter has written a particular song for a particular voice. For example, Missy Elliot expresses her music through technology, and Christina Aguilera contributes her talent with her voice. The creativity of a music video is something music audiences today thrive on.

The downside, if there is one, according to Brian is that artists need more time to be creative. Audiences are very fickle, times are changing fast. If artists cannot keep up with the changing times, the way certain artists like Madonna have, then we will continue to experience many one-hit-wonders. Music is "disposable". People are getting what they want very quickly, and if they don't like it, they can get rid of it very quickly. "This makes me sad," admitted Brian. "Afterall, it took Seal 25 years to produce his first album, and the minute it became a hit, he was given nine months to produce the next one!"

Because Brian's department basically dictates what goes on MTV, he has to be very careful about the integrity of MTV's image. "MTV has very strict standards concerning violence," he told me. In fact, MTV has been known to edit out parts of videos they feel are inappropriate. For example, they took out a substantial part of Eminem and Dre's new video, "Forgot About Dre." Some artists were upset with MTV because they felt that the omission took away from the art of the video and detracted from their music. However, MTV would rather not take the risk of negatively impacting youth. On the other hand, some people have argued, and Brian seems to agree, that when audiences listen to music expressing violence and rage, it helps them to better handle their anger, as if the music were a socket in which they might plug in their negative feelings.