Research: History of music videos

Music videos today have become extremely explicit and mainly focused on star image. Currently, artist's today sell themselves as sex objects, particularly women, whilst the men are portrayed as the dominant one. This suggests that the artist's methods in selling music today is through the star motif's in the videos. However, the more traditional music videos focus on the star image but, in a more conservative way with videos that have narrative rather than concept.

Key dates in our history: 

1929 - Bessie Smith:

This artist appeared in a two-real short film called 'Saint Louis Blues'. Although this cannot be counted as a music video, it was a dramatised performance from the artist for her hit song which did promote it through the film. 

1940 - Disney:

Walt Disney released 'Fantasia' which was an animated film based around famous pieces of classical music. This also may not be classed as a music video due to the lack of performance from real people however did still promote Disney.

1920s-40s what were music videos used for?

In this era, many films were accompanied by moving images which were especially animation. These were not considered as music videos due to the basic edit of images to films or musicals. However, this was a very important era where films had songs to promote it.

1956 - Tony Bennett:

Tony Bennet is filmed walking in Hyde Park, London for his song 'Stanger in paradise'. This single was distributed on US and UK television. This suggests that Bennett was the first to make a music video due to the visuals accompanying the music. 

1964 - The Beatles:

This video arguably set out the basic visual vocabulary of today's music videos. This influenced a vast number of contemporary muscians at the time to create similar moving images to accompany their music. This is why this can be seen as the first music video due to the more affective footage than Bennett's work.

1966-68 - The Monkees:

This was originally a TV show. However, each episode included a special made film segment that was created to accompany their songs that was used in their TV series. This suggests that it may not be an official music video due to the purpose of promoting the TV series and not actual songs for the artist.

1966 - Birth of Top of the pops:

This programme was focuses on artists promoting their music. This meant that artists had to compete for air time as TOTP's had a limit on the number of performances it could show. This was not classed as music videos due to the live performances that were given which were not edited suggesting the lack of music video features.

1967- The Beatles:

The music video they produced was 'Penny Lane' which used techniques borrowed from films due to the different film effects, dramatic lighting, camera angles and rhythmic editing. This suggests that this could be classed as a music video due to the different editing styles used which are now conventions to music videos.

1975 - Queen:

Queen's music video for 'Bohemian Rhapsody' is classed as the first original music video. This is because the purpose of the video was to replace a live performance on TV as the band could not make it. Although The Beatles had created music videos, Queen were the first to create a video specifically for that song to be played on TV. This suggests the pure purpose was the promote the song for the artist's advantage. This was classed as the first music video made on 'video' format again suggesting the conventions of music videos in today's media.

1970-1980 - How videos generally developed:

The key development of the modern music videos was video recording with editing processes. High quality video tape recorders and portable cameras enabled many pop acts to produce promotional videos quickly and cheaply, rather than using film which was expensive at the time.

By the mid 80s, releasing a video to accompany a new single has become standard. Artist's were using high budgets to create these for example, 'The Jacksons'. 

1981 - MTV:

The launch of MTV was huge and used Buggles' 'Video killed the radio star' to be the music video they first aired. In the early 80s, artist's started to use more sophisticated effects in their videos and added a storyline or plot to the music video to gain publicity. The lyrics to 'Video killed the radio star' was controversial due to the message and narrative that the music video industry was killing the radio as people would more likely become interested in videos rather than listen to them on the radio suggesting the important message being promoted.

1984 - Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson was the first to create a concept of a short film. 'Thriller' was classed as a short music video due to it having a beginning, middle, and end. Jackson's 'Thriller' took music formats to the next level creating competition in the industry. Also, during this era, Top of the pops began to censor video content so another approach was to produce a video that would be barred or edited in order to cause controversy and publicity when promoting the release. An example of this was Duran Duran's 'Girls on film'.

1980s - MTV and video development:

By the mid 80s, music videos played a central role in popular music marketing. 

For example, Madonna owned a great deal of her success to the skilful construction and addictive appeal of her videos. Although people see MTV as the start of the 'Golden era' of music videos, others see it as hastening the death of the true musical artist, due to the importance of physical appearance rather than the actual audio.



How have music videos changed over time?

From looking through the history of music videos it is clear that there has been a significant change and improvement in the music video industry. The editing skills and technology have grown vastly which are now used to create high concept and high quality music videos which enable artists to gain much more publicity now than ever before. Also, the purpose of music videos today are purely to gain popularity on their new album or song and ensure there is a constant profit. For example, Rihanna's 'Rude Boy' video was made to create a hype around the album 'Loud'. This was done successfully due to the controversy around the video being purely sexualised and focused on star image rather than an actual narrative. This suggests that music videos today have become more about physical appearance in order to sell your products rather than having a narrative to your lyrics like before.

Overall, it is important to know about the history of music videos in order to see the pattern evolving over time. It also allows researchers to predict the music video industry in the future and enable artist's to carry on selling their work. Personally, I have gathered many ideas from researching into the history of music videos as I now have an understanding of what the conventions are in the modern day. I will mainly be using the 1980's era as more of an example rather than the traditional music videos due to the more modern thinking and the guarantee that my music video will sell.