ZZ Top's Afterburner highlighted MTV marketing power

ZZ Top released their ninth LP, Afterburner, in 1985, leveraging the MTV success of its predecessor, Eliminator. The album deliberately replicated the previous formula, reaching No.2 in the UK Album Charts and eventually going five times platinum.

Described as "self-aware and business savvy," the band understood that their distinct visual identity was a marketable asset. Rather than altering their image for television, they retained their recognisable aesthetic and paired it with consistent video concepts featuring model Kymberly Herrin.

The strategy validated the sequential album titles, which functioned as "crafty record company-speak for ‘here’s more of what you loved before’." The commercial results were driven by heavy MTV rotation of singles like the US No.8 hit Sleeping Bag.

The band further monetised this exposure through the Afterburner World Tour, which stretched well into 1987. The tour featured an elaborate, futuristic stage set designed to translate the album's visual branding to a live audience.

Record label Warner Bros sought to capitalise directly on this renewed consumer demand. The company released The Six Pack, a box-set of the band's first five albums plus 1981's El Loco. However, the label added new drum and guitar effects to the original recordings in what was described as a "misguided attempt to milk the Afterburner effect."

The band subsequently pivoted away from this highly produced, synthesiser-driven commercial model. “Under the microscope, the previous two albums would be classified as our most production-orientated records,” said Gibbons. “We really were getting experimental. But with Recycler, we set up in the studio in Memphis and the first thing we did was My Head’s In Mississippi, our homage to Howlin’ Wolf and the gang. We’d been to the Delta Blues Museum [in Clarksdale, Mississippi] and it influenced us quite a bit. We got a bit bluesier again.”