Beyonce and Lala, TRL 2003

There are many things one can think of to bring back from the late 90s and early aughts. For, it was a simpler time, before social media to even having a less than smart President; which is still 10x’s better than what we currently have in the White House. Nevertheless, MTV has the same idea and decided to make our aught dreams come true by rebooting Total Request Live! This at least can be one of those magical timeless shows from the early 2000s we could stand watching again.

When MTV announced this morning that the live music video countdown and interview show TRL was coming back, I nearly ran to pop in my old Destiny's Child CD to prepare. I mean, if you were old enough to watch MTV during that time, you can remember all the hottest music artist and celebs in their bad outfits making waves and bringing us all the new music videos and craziness the VJ’s could handle. Not to mention, the classic MTV studio at 1515 Broadway facing Times Square, where all the fans would be waiting for a Beyoncé, Brittany, Usher or NSYNC to poke their heads at the window and say hello.

The show was always on topic and on point for the news of the day. From LaLa to Quddus and Carson Daly of course, they were a great set of Hosts and VJ’s that carried the show. TRL which premiered in 1998 had a decade run before being cancelled in which it then has taken another ten years of trying to figure out what direction the network wanted to go in. With its recent end of MTV News (their long form news media and music journalism format) that rebooted in 2016 in order to focus more on music again.

 “MTV at its best—whether it’s news, whether it’s a show, whether it’s a docu-series—is about amplifying young people’s voices,” MTV president Chris McCarthy told the Times. “We put young people on the screen, and we let the world hear their voices. We shouldn’t be writing 6,000-word articles on telling people how to feel.”

The new one-hour format of TRL is set to premiere in October. Including additional social media content like Instagram and Snapchat in tandem. MTV is currently constructing a new TRL studio in Times Square that will feature five new lesser-known hosts including rapper and comedian DC Young Fly and KISS FM Chicago host Erik Zachary.