MTV's landmark program “Brand: New” returns after 25 years

For those unfamiliar with it, the “old” Brand: New was a cult show from the 2000s, airing every weekday at 12:30 a.m. on MTV. Initially, it consisted of just one hour of uninterrupted music. Its uniqueness lay in showcasing music videos that were a bit more refined than those broadcast during the day, with a particular focus on the hybridization between rock and electronic music: a clash/encounter that was still a novelty at the time—partially misunderstood—and which would only later gain recognition, especially thanks to the success of Radiohead’s Kid A, who were, not coincidentally, seen as the guardians of the show. The music of Brand New wasn’t just something different from the mainstream pop of Britney Spears and the many boy bands; it was “other” music, daring to present itself as “music of the future”: a sound concept that pushed well beyond what was already considered alternative music at the time—namely alternative rock, popularized by the global success of Nirvana. In a sense, you could say Brand New offered “an alternative to alternative music.” But there was more than just music. Much more.

What captivated an entire generation of young millennials—the so-called MTV Generation, or as Coppola himself put it, “the 4 Salti in Padella generation”—was the show’s first “human” version. In mid-2000, the decision was made to introduce Massimo Coppola as an unconventional host: something between a rambling passerby and a friend you confide in at the bar. The stream of music videos was thus interspersed with short sketches that seemed to come from an observatory on another planet, especially considering the level of Berlusconi-era TV at the time. Even the show’s minimalist setting—a semi-empty studio with a green wall in the background and a red armchair in the corner—seemed to belong to a parallel universe. It could have been anywhere: the living room of a spaceship or a non-place outside of time. But in reality, it was just a small room in the MTV Italia studios, inhabited by a young philosophy graduate in his early twenties. Supported in writing by Alberto Piccinini and Giovanni Robertini, his short monologues revolved around topics that linked music with current events, politics, and society: they were little bursts of (self-)irony and progressivism that kept many young people awake late into the night. There wasn’t a real script—the conversation flowed seamlessly from the personal to the political: from how to flirt with someone at the library to Big Brother, all the way to 9/11.

Some fans even began writing him letters, which were regularly read on the show and used as openings or reflections for the following monologues. And it was the fans’ love that made the show’s return in its new form possible. The fact that Brand: New aired at ungodly hours actually fostered a pre-internet practice that now seems almost endearing: using a VCR to record the episodes and (re)watch them anytime. After announcing the show’s “come back”, Coppola wasted no time and asked die-hard fans to send in material so it could become an integral part of the new show. But it would be wrong to see it as a simple nostalgia operation. In fact, Coppola flat-out rejects that term—he says he dissociates from his former self and openly refers to it as an anti-reunion, in full Coppola Style. And it's true: the new Brand: New is in every way a strange space-time short circuit. It’s like a videotape being fast-forwarded and rewound on a loop. The grainy clips from the past are only part of the show, but its heart beats elsewhere. The live monologues are all “brand new” and manage the difficult feat of not feeling artificial while maintaining the progressive and nonconformist youthful spirit that defined the original program.

The topics tackled are rooted in our present day and are exactly what you’d expect from a show that had never gone off the air: there’s artificial intelligence, the Spotify algorithm, the crisis of the white male, and of course, cursed capitalism. The perspective is still as sharp and ironic as ever, even though the time being discussed is different. There are also jabs at current Italian politics; at one point, Coppola even dusts off his old interview with Giorgia Meloni, done during that sort of brilliant spin-off, Avere Vent’anni. The before and after now walk hand in hand as if they were one and the same: “Where were we?” Coppola asks as soon as he steps on stage, as if no time had passed—or rather, as if time didn’t exist at all. The music featured in the show isn’t just from the past: sure, Kid A is a must, but it’s not enough. The sonic concept behind it all remains the same: keeping curiosity about the future alive, just as the original show intended.

In doing so, the new Brand: New creates a sort of new eternalism where past, present, and future coexist simultaneously—“a kind of hyperdimensional block in which every moment is co-present,” to quote Alan Moore, one of the strongest proponents of this philosophy. That’s exactly the effect Massimo Coppola’s new show achieves, though the disorientation is softened by the human warmth surrounding it. The old Brand: New was a safe space that connected countless bedrooms miles apart, a secret tear duct like the one imagined by Safran Foer in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, designed to link a network of loneliness. The new version finally brings these people together in real life because, as Coppola says, “being afraid together is better than consoling ourselves alone.” Without giving too much away, the show ends with a new song by a legendary band making a comeback after years of silence—an epic track that says nothing lasts forever, but in repeating it endlessly, it casts a spell that does the exact opposite, creating yet another short circuit and a final flash of eternity before sending us back to our lives.