A History Of Music Videos

What is a music video?

A music video is a short film/video which accompanies a complete piece of music, most commonly a song. Modern music videos are primarily used asa a marketing device, intended to promote the sale of music recordings.

(A very early example of a music video is "St Louis Blues" by Bessie Smith in 1929. Blues singer Bessie Smith appeared in a two-reel short film called "St. Louis Blues (1929) featuring a dramatised performance of the hit song. It was shown in theatres until 1932).

Music videos are often called promotional videos or simply promos, due to the fact that they are mostly promotional devices for the artist(s) who's track is being used in the music video. Sometimes, music videos are termed short-form music videos to distinguish them from full length films pertaining in music. In the 1980s, the term "rock video" was often used to describe this form entertainment, although the term has now fallen into disuse, or has lots it's initial connotation.

(In 1940, Walt Disney released "Fantasia", an animated film based around famous pieces of classical music).

The earliest music videos/music promos were filmed in the mid-1950s. However, before then, as early as the 1920s, films by animators such as Oskar Fischinger were accompanied by musical scores labelled "visual music". The early animated videos of Walt Disney (Silly Symphonies) were built and based around music. The Warner Brothers cartoons, even today billed as Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies were initially based around specific songs from upcoming Warner Brothers musical films. Live action musical shorts, featuring popular performers such as Cab Calloway were also distributed to theatres. The Panoram Jukebox with 8 three-minute "Soundies" were popular in taverns and night spots, but started to fade and not be distributed during World War II.

Developments during the 1950s - 60s

In 1956, Tony Bennett was filmed walking along The Serpentine in Hyde Park, London whilst his recording of "Stranger In Paradise played. This film was distributed to UK and US television stations, which played it. This led Bennett to claim that he had made the first music video.

According to the Internet Accuracy Project, DJ J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson was the first to pin the term "rock video" in 1959.

Around 1960, the Scopitone (a visual jukebox) was invented in France. Short films were produced by many French artists such as Francois Hardy and Jacques Dutronc to accompany their music. It's use eventually spread to other countries and similar machines such as the Cinebox (Italy) and the Color-Sonic (USA) were made from influence.

The defining work in the development of modern music videos was The Beatle's first major motion picture, A Hard Day's Night in 1964 which was directed by Richard Lester. The musical segments in this film arguably set out the basic visual vocabulary of even today's music videos, which has influenced a wide range of contemporary artists. The Beatles took the genre further with their groundbreaking film "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane" in early 1967, which used techniques such as: reversed film, dramatic lighting, unusual camera gales and rhythmic editing. Created at the height of the psychedelic music period, these landmark films by The Beatles are among the very first purpose-made concept music videos that attempt to illustrate the song in an artful manner, rather than creating a music video for idealised performance.

The Modern Era and the 1970s

The key innovation in the development of modern music videos was video recording and editing processes, along with related effects such as chroma-key. The advent of high quality colour videotape recorders and portable video cameras coincided with the DIY ethos and the New Wave era. This enabled many pop acts to produce promotional videos extremely quickly and cheaply which compared to the highly-expensive costs of using using film previously.

In the UK, the importance of Top Of The Pops to promote a single created lots of innovation and competition between bands and record labels as the show's producers placed strict limits on the number of vies that it would use and distribute on the show. Therefore, a good video would increase a song's sales as viewers would hope to see the video again the following week on the show.

(Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" also started a complete new era for using music videos as promotional devices).

1980s

By the mid-1980s, real easing a music video to accompany a new single had become standard and almost a necessity. Acts like The Jacksons sought to gain a commercial edge by creating lavish music videos with millions of dollars of budget. This was most notably "Can You Feel It".

(MTV is launched in 1981 with the first aired video being "Video Killed The Radio Star" by Buggles).

In the wary to mid-80s, artists started to use more sophisticated effects in their videos, and started adding narratives and plots to them. Michael Jackson was the first artist to create the concept of a short film to accompany a song. A short film is a music video that has a beginning, middle and end and contains a strong narrative. He did this in a small way with his song "Billie Jean" but it wasn't until his 1984 release of the Thriller short film that he took the music video format to another level. Thriller's controversy and censored material made it having to be distributed at midnight, for late night viewing. This anticipation and the resulting publicity due to it's material made it extremely successful.

Music videos today

In the "information technology" era, music videos now approach the popularity of the songs themselves, being sold in collections on video tape and DVD. Hardcore enthusiast of music videos sometimes watch them on mute to purely enjoy them for their aesthetic value. Instead of watching the music video for it's music, which is the basis of the art form, music videos nowadays are more appreciated for their visual qualities, while a large proportion of viewers are uninterested in the audio aspect of the performance. This is a normal sociological reaction, some say, to the increasing trend of the music business to focus on visual appeals of the artist (also things like male gaze) instead of the quality of the music. Critics say that music managers and labels have sought to capitalise sex appeal of females in music videos rate he than making logical, calculated business decisions.