Music Video History

Music videos were created as a purpose to help promote a song to help it generate a bigger audience and therefore get more funding.

1920s

The idea of music videos came around in 1929 when a singer called Bessie Smith starred in a two reel short film called Saint Louis Blues, which featured a performance of a song that she sang.

1930s

This is when experimentation with music and visuals came into place. A man named Len Lye experimented with Kaleidoscopes and colour boxes to create patterned visuals for an audience to look at while listening to the music. Colour TV wasn't even out at this time so being able to watch something like this in colour was a huge step in the making of technology and media.

1940s

In 1940s Disney released Fantasia which is an animated film based around famous pieces of classical music. This was a huge step in the music video industry as it shows this idea of performance and narrative. Each song has a storyline to it and characters dancing, playing instruments etc. This is what created the idea for music videos and introduced that they can become something big. Fantasia was a big influence for the industry at the time.



1950s/60s

At this time the sort of music videos that we know of today started to come about. Music and TV was becoming big in the media industry so people started putting them together. As music videos started becoming big the Scopitone Jukebox was created which was like a normal jukebox that you pay to play a song of your choosing but a Scopitone Jukebox also has a screen so you can watch the music video with it.

The Beatles came along and made 'A Hard Days Night' in 1964 which they created the basic layout of a music video that we know of today - they have similar visuals of todays music videos. They also brought out 'Strawberry Fields Forever' which began the idea of physically editing to create a music video for example adding transitions and reversing shots. This music video was filmed in just 2 days and was a big inspiration for the industry.

1970s - The Modern Era

The first promotional music videos were created in the 1970s which is fairly recent. The turning point for music videos was when Queen created a music video for 'Bohemian Rhapsody'. It changed the music video industry because it was ahead of time in terms of quality, colours, studio, lighting, performance, close ups, editing, etc.





1980s/90s

After Queen created this music video it inspired other artists to do the same to help promote their music for example Jackson Five realised how big Queen became after this so they made a music video for their song 'Can You Feel It'. Music videos started to properly kick off at this time. 'Video killed the radio star' was the first music video to be aired on TV by MTV which when it was launched it was the first 24 hour music video station. Artists started adding more sophisticated effects in their music videos and started adding more of a plot to them. In 1983 Michael Jackson released 'Thriller' which cost $500,000 to create. The music video for ‘Scream’ by Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson claims to be the most expensive music video ever made to this day with an investment of $7m. The director of this music video was Mark Romanek and it aired in May 1995 making $11m. Following this are music videos for some of Madonna’s music for example ‘Die Another Day’ which cost $6.1m to create, and some music videos for other artists such as Guns N’ Roses and Gwen Stefani. I have noticed that most of the expensive music videos were created 1990s so there hasn’t recently been as much money spent on music videos today and I think that the reason of this is because music videos aren't as big as they used to be when they were just coming out.

As we have all different genres of music now days, this influences the different types of music videos created to work alongside them and promote them. They all contain different properties to work with the type of music we have today because before not many genres of music would create music videos for their music which is partially responsible to what gave the name to pop music as its what took over the music video industry.

Properties of rock music videos

·       The lightening tends to be low key and the colours tend to be dark due to mood in which this type of music creates and so appeals to a middle-aged sort of audience.

·       The costumes rock artists wear are commonly quite dark and made of leather. They may have a bold design on their clothing as well.

·       In terms of props it is common that rock artists will be holding a guitar as that is a key instrument used in rock music.

·       Other: mainly males, instruments, loud and expressive, shown at a concert, performance based, fast paced.

Properties of pop music videos

·       The lighting is usually high key and quite bright making the music video stand out more and appeal to younger audiences.

·       They are upbeat and the style / narrative of the music video normally matches to the story of the actual song.

·       The costumes aren’t specific but generally match to the fashion sense at the time. They also include quite exaggerated fashion and commonly show a lot of skin especially with female artists.

·       Other: dancing, young male & female arists, well known locations, narrative and performance based.

Properties of rap music videos

·       The lighting is usually quite low key and dull in rap music videos because it represents quite a harsh setting an appeals to young adults.

·       The sort of costumes worn are quite fashionable as well but more specific such as hoodies, chains, sunglasses and a cap.

·       In most rap music videos, it is very common that with the artist raps they will be holding a mic in their hand.

·       Other: harsh language, narrative based, low angels, fast paced, hand signals, clubs.

Most watched music videos

·         Gangnam Style by PSY – 2.872b views in July 2012

·         See You Again by Wiz Khalifa featuring Charlie Puth – 2.830b views by April 2015

·         Sorry by Justin Bieber – 2.582b views by October 2015

Most popular music videos from each decade

·       1960s – Satisfaction – Rolling Stones: This music video was popular because the band were very big at the time so many people wanted to see their music video.

·       1970s – Bohemian Rhapsody – Queen: This music video was popular because this band was big at this time and on top of that this particular song was very different to their usual style of music with shocked their fans and intrigued them causing more people to see the music video.

·       1980s – Thriller – Michael Jackson: This music video was very popular at this time because it changed the industry of music videos and has inspired so many other artists. Michael Jackson was also a very big artist and put a lot of money and time into make his music videos intriguing for his fans.

·       1990s – Baby On More Time – Britney Spears: This music video was very popular at this time because it generated the classic pop styled music video and she had many fans at this time too.

·       2000s – Bad Romance – Lady Gaga: This music video was very popular at this time because Lady Gaga always put a lot into her music videos and they were very different and unusual compared to other artists at the time so she stood out from the crowd.

Doing this research towards the history of music videos has given me an understanding of the purpose of music videos today and how they became what they are now. It has allowed me to compare what music videos used to be like and what they are like now and how they have influenced modern music videos. Hopefully I can even use this research to influence my own music video.