History of Music Videos

The history of music videos

Before the introduction of music videos. The creator of the song would put images to go with the song     to show how a live performance would look. However in the 1920’s onwards animations were created   called “Screen songs” this allowed the audience to sing along with the song as it played.

When music videos first became known they were made into a film so people would go to the cinema         to watch the band or artist act and then perform songs throughout the movie. An example of this is:

·      The Beetles featured in a film named ‘Hard day’s night’ in 1964. This was described as a “mock documentary”. This gave them a way of promoting their songs to a wider audience. It meant the audience would pay to watch them in a movie. Therefore giving them more publicity.

·     Bob Dylan was one of the first people to make a music video. The song realised was ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ in 1965. However this video was shot in one edit and had no narrative. This is completely different to how videos are filmed now. But back then the focus of the video was put on the understanding of the lyrics. Hence why the lyrics shown in this video took up most of the frame. The video was purposely filmed in black and white because it was cheaper.

·      Queen were the first band to create a Magnetic videotape with ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ in 1975. When it was first released it was a big hit. With the introduction of MTV in 1981 their video became No.1 in the charts and it stayed like this for a very long time. MTV made videos a promotional thing and since then music videos have became an important part in the production of a song.

·     Michael Jackson made his video ‘Thriller’ in 1982 into more of a short film. Including a good performance and a narrative into the video. Throughout the whole twelve-minute clip there are three levels of digesis. · This video was aired on TV, which was very popular with the public.

·      Peter Gabriel’s video for ‘Sledgehammer’ was very effective as it challenge how video were created and viewed because it was made by animation and stop motion. This gave a new way of making videos. This quirky video also created an image of Peter as being “Cutting edge” as he did not follow the conventions of how videos were made in that time.

·      Madonna in ‘Vogue’ 1990 tried to create a video that would be remembered and liked by the audience and therefore throughout the video made her self look like iconic figures such as Marilyn Monroe. She created a good video by using imagery from films. Therefore putting on a good performance.

·      Beyoncé with ‘single ladies’ was released in 2008. This video is an example of what videos are like in the 21^st century. The focus in on the artist. It also shows that now artists are versatile because they now can sing, act and dance. This whole video does not show Beyoncé singing, it shows her dancing talents, taking the focus away from the lyrics which is very different to Bob Dylan's 'Subterranean Homesick Values'. Therefore insinuating that in order to be a 'star' you need to have these talents. 

These videos all show the development in music videos and how they transitioned from wanting the lyrics as the focus of the song to a performance and a narrative needing to be shown in order to entertain the audience. 

Here is a timeline of all the videos mentioned in this blog post: