History of Music Videos

The History of Music Videos – Throughout the Ages

Over the years, music videos have evolved from promotional films, clips from films to the modern interpretation which combines music and imagery. Music videos as they are known today came into prominence in the 1980’s with the birth of MTV. They use a wide range of styles and techniques including animation, performance, abstract, live concert performances, narrative and interpretation of the lyrics. Some videos fuse two or more different styles together for example, in the 1986 Rolling Stones ‘Harlem Shuffle’ video it is a merge of a performance by the group and an animation to entertain and grab the audience’s attention.  

In 1894 music publishers Edward B Marks and Joe Stern hired electricians and various musical performers to promote sales of their song ‘The Little Lost Child’. Using a magic lantern, a series of images were projected onto a screen as a form of entertainment known as the illustrated song, which were the first steps towards today’s music videos.

With the arrival of the ‘talkies’ in the late 1920’s many short musical films were produced by the main film studios of the day including Warner Brothers. These ‘shorts’ were typically six minutes in duration and featured a fusion of styles including art deco and animation.

The early animated films of Walt Disney especially Fantasia featured interpretations of several musical pieces. By the 1930’s the ‘film shorts’ had developed into ‘two reel short films’ which featured a narrative alongside the hit song of the day. For example ‘When the blue of the night meets the gold of the day’ featuring Bing Crosby.

Classic Hollywood musicals were another important predecessor to today’s music videos. Several well known videos have actually been modelled very closely on musical films of the 1950’s, for example Madonna’s ‘Material Girl’ 1985 is almost a remake of the ‘Diamonds are a Girls Best Friend’ number from ‘Gentlemen prefer blondes’ 1953.

In 1959, disc jocky and singer JP ‘the big bopper’ Richardson was the first person to coin the phrase music video. With the rise of popularity of television from the mid 1980’s coupled with the advent of rock and roll music, many new stars came into prominence. Many of these stars performed live on the popular American variety show ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’. It gave them a chance of a wider mass audience, similar to today’s music videos. In September 1956, Elvis Presley made his first appearance on the show and subsequently his act was filmed from the waist upwards, because his pelvic gyrations were seen as too vulgar for American TV audiences of the time. In February 1963 The Beatles made their first live American performance on the same show. Other important performances were made by The Supremes 1964 and The Doors 1967.

During the rock era, to gain a wider audience artists were made to perform in cinema films, therefore gaining a global audience and immense popularity. The Beatles film ‘Hard Day’s Night’ for example were practically a feature length music video. By 1967 the promotional films for ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ and ‘Penny Lane’ used techniques only seen up to that point in avant-garde movies: reversed images, slow motion, dramatic lighting, unusual camera angles and colour filtering.

Top of the Pops

Although there had been TV shows that included live performances by the stars of the day e.g. ‘Ready Steady Go’, on New Year’s Day 1964 what was to become the most popular of these shows was first screened. ‘Top of the Pops was a simple format; a presenter-DJ (e.g. Jimmy Savile, Dave Lee Travis) would introduce the latest hits which would be performed/mimed by the artists themselves. When artists were unavailable to perform, film promos or video clips were shown in place of the performance. Also various hits were performed by the regular dance troupe ‘Pan’s People’. Who were always attired in relevant costumes e.g. snow clothing. This show was extremely popular throughout the seventies, eighties and to the lesser extent the nineties and naughties by which time MTV had been established as a global jukebox, thanks in part to the Live Aid concert 1985. The Queen video ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ which many people believe to be the first modern music video was first aired on Top of the Pops in 1975.

MTV

MTV was launched in August 1981; it was originally intended as a television version of a radio station using VJ’s (video jockeys) instead of DJ’s. The channel has been criticised as a promotional tool for the recording industry and it was accused of devaluing music: quality being replaced by quantity. The popularity of current music videos can be traced back to the early years of MTV. Many of the videos had large budgets and in some cases produced as mini films directed by A-List Hollywood directors for example Michael Jacksons ‘Thriller’ directed by John Landis. Thriller is often cited as the most influential pop music videos of all time. In 2009 the video was inducted into the national film registry of the library of congress, the first video ever to receive this honour.

Music artists of the 1980’s benefitted greatly from exposure on MTV so much so that nowadays it is inconceivable that any new album/music release is not accompanied by a video release. The Live Aid concert of 1985 gave many 1980’s artists: Queen, U2, Dire Straits and the organiser himself Bob Geldof the chance to boost their record sales and gain a global audience, as well as benefitting the intended charities.

By the early 1990’s MTV were playing drastically different music styles back to back, for example heavy metal acts like Metallica and pop acts like Destiny’s Child, as well as the older established rock acts like David Bowie. However, by 1996 it had begun to promote newer pop acts like Green Day and No Doubt. By the end of the decade, it began showing pop videos only, inspired by the success of the Spice Girls and boy bands such as Back Street Boys. Within this era MTV were criticised for repeating its videos constantly and not using a variety as it did in the past.

Within the last decade there has been a trend to include more explicit content within the music video as an art form. Explicit content required that the video be censored during day time showings. Madonna and Britney Spears have both has a record number of censored music videos with six each. The most explicit of the videos was Madonna’s ‘Justify My Love’ 1990 which was actually band by MTV for containing sexually explicit material and nudity. Other themes in prohibited videos included: strong language e.g. Cee Lo Green’s ‘Fuck You’ which was edited for radio and television purposes to ‘Forget You’, murder and violence shown in the Primus video ‘My Name is Mud’ which included imagery of a murder committed after an argument and religious iconography seen in Madonna’s ‘Like a Prayer’ which caused so much controversy in the Catholic community.

This trend is a worrying one particularly when you consider that the intended age of the audience of many of today’s videos, is a very young one. There have been numerous complaints about the sexual images and lyrics in many modern videos. In June 2011 a review by Reg Bailey into the sexualisation and commercialisation music videos can influence children into accessing internet porn. An example of this is Rihanna, a popular artist with the youth of today and her song ‘S n M’ which uses pseudo pornographic images which lead to it being band from eleven different countries and the airing time of the video in Britain being reduced to after 7pm on Radio One.

From the early 1980’s when the music video we know today became extremely popular with youth culture, the films themselves have morphed from entertainment which could be enjoyed by a family audience of a singer or a band performing a song to in some cases a very explicit medium which according to Reg Bailey’s review may need age ratings similar to those imposed on movies. 

In conclusion, has the music video as an art form gone too far in its explicitness, when music videos simply started out as a way of an artist gaining a larger audience without the time and expense of touring? In my opinion as modern society has no taboo subjects, therefore there is no limit to the content of music videos. Music videos are simply mirroring societies trends, and don’t necessarily have relevance to the song lyrics, but are still achieving their goal of promoting the artist and their song.