A music video is a short video clip that accompanies a piece of music. A music video is often regarded as a piece of marketing.
In 1964, The Beatles starred in their very first feature-length film, entitled ‘A Hard Day’s Night’. This allowed them to take advantage of their new-found fame and success. The film, representing the age it was shot in, was in black and white and was a ‘mockumentary’. The film featured comedic dialogue and a narrative as well as musical sequences, which would later become the basis for music videos. It can be seen that The Beatles inspired modern music videos, especially Oasis, whose videos were ‘post-modern’, being directly influenced from past music videos. In addition to this, The Beatles also inspired the hit TV show ‘The Monkees’ (1966-1968) which consisted of narrative and film intertwined with musical sequences.
The song ‘Help!’ sung by The Beatles, is arguably one of the prime archetypes of the modern performance-style music video, featuring the entirety of the band performing the song to the audience. A shot towards the end shows George Harrison’s left hand and guitar neck in sharp focus, with John Lennon, out of focus, in the background singing. This camera style, a shallow depth of field, can be seen in modern day music videos. The Beatles were the first band to use ‘music videos’, dare I say, to increase their success and promote them. I say this because The Beatles, who were a worldwide success, made promotional feature-length films to be distributed worldwide instead of physically appearing in, for Example, Malaysia, and performing. The first abstract music video was, theoretically, done by The Beatles for the ‘rain’ promo. Besides from a few shots of Lennon singing and a shot of the band performing, the video abandons all obvious narrative structures and any pretense of a performance. Also, promos were made for ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ and ‘Penny Lane’ because they were, due to the large amount of studio editing, impossible to play live. The videos, influenced by Avant Garde films, were also abstract which were artful, expressionistic and were psychedelic. The videos featured no performance or narrative.
Music videos in the 70’s began to gain the artist recognition and more success, and soon became an important part of the music industry, as they showcased the artist’s singing talent, and therefore transformed the music video. In 1974, the Australian TV show ‘Countdown’ began showing video clips alongside the music of guests appearing on the show, as a means to promote the acts. This played an important role in developing the music video from a feature-length movie to how we know them now. Following this was MTV, launching in 1981 with the song ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’, by ‘The Buggles’. MTV was the very first 24-hour music channel and allowed artist’s to launch their singles with music videos. Madonna didn’t just use music videos as a medium for song promotion, but it also helped to promote her image, making her stand out. Shortly thereafter of the launch of MTV, in 1983, Michael Jackson’s 14-minute video for ‘Thriller’ came out. This performance video is regarded as the most influential music video to date, featuring aspects of performance, but largely a narrative video. However, MTV was restricted to the USA, so in 1987, MTV Europe was launched, allowing all of Europe, including the UK, to receive 24-hour music television.
Before MTV Europe had launched, the UK relied on Top of the Pops to play music videos. TOTP, solely dedicated to live performances, began showing a strictly limited number of music videos in the late 1970’s. This proved to be wise, as David Bowie gained his first no. 1 in nearly a decade with the video for ‘Ashes to Ashes’ , which was highly acclaimed and, of course, the song wasn’t too bad either.
In 1984, highlighting the importance of MTV on the music industry, MTV launched the ‘MTV Video Music Awards’, later to become the ‘VMA’s’, which celebrated the success of certain music videos (throughout the 1990’s, MTV spread worldwide). This brought the rise of the directors. In December 1992, MTV began crediting the directors alongside the musicians, and it became clear that music videos had become the auteur’s medium. Such directors included Michael Gondry, Mike Romanek, Hype Williams and Spike Jonze, who gained recognition for their directing skills. To date, the most expensive music video is ‘Scream’ by Michael and Janet Jackson, costing approximately $7million. The second most expensive is ‘Bedtime Stories’ by Madonna, costing roughly $5million.
In 1997, iFilm launched. This was a website which streamed short movies, and more importantly in this context, music videos. Also, Napster, a peer-to-peer file sharing service which ran from 1999 until 2001 allowed the sharing of music videos. However, this was a slow process. Youtube, launched in 2005, and Myspace Video’s, which launched in 2007, allowed the quick streaming of any videos uploaded on the websites. This included music videos and allowed audience’s to quickly view (through streaming) a music video. This had a positive impact on the music industry as most artists see a positive impact when their videos are posted online, and the portability of these music videos (with iTunes now distributing them to be played on iPod’s and iPhone’s) sees the videos spread quickly. In 2008, rock band Weezer took note of the impact that the internet was having on the music industry and featured over 20 stars in their video for ‘Pork n Beans’, all of which gained fame and popularity, originally, from Youtube. No surprises, the video was Weezer’s highest charting song to date.
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