The History of Music Videos

The History of Music Videos

A general conception surrounds the era of pop in the 1950’s that followed the trends of pop culture between Western civilisation to be the beginning of the music video; whilst this ear did bring forth new genres of music and new, innovative technologies for broadcasting and viewing, music videos had relatively began some 30 years earlier. The 1950’s however, is the starting point to where an economy, sparked by music performers, can be seen.

Time Line of Music Videos

Generally, before the 1960’s, music video’s had been little more than live recordings of a group or band playing – more so, the new fashion of fresh rock music – that had eventually progressed into a sequence (with little editing) of one live performance, multiple performances or even live performances combined with rehearsal shots; this is what eventually developed into promo’s for TV when a band could not be there. By the 1960’s, the likes of The Beatles (UK) and The Monkees (USA) brought about a shift in music video styles: more editing was beginning to be used, narrative sequence closely relating to lyrics was sublimated, and from The Monkees particularly, an exploration in abstract and surrealism cinematography (with which they also explored live performances and comedy). For the next 20 years, music videos followed this fashion of narrative styled videos, following along to the song lyrics and style of music, by the 1970’s it quickly became established that different genres of music had very different conventions more so to the appeal of ‘image’ for the female artists. By 1980, there began a shift again when companies realised a music video could relatively ‘sell’ a single, and therefore began to input more budget, by 1985, special effects were beginning to be explored and have been improved to such a date. Whilst post 2010 follows narrative music videos, combined with live shots of the artist or band, or even mined singing, editing has become more complex in terms of sequences and special effects; however image is just as important as ever.

Just as the newly introduced ideal of narrative, videos still operate as ‘fantasies’ structured around the music, yet fewer limitations have been found on the extents of particular music artists or genre’s, making individualism and trends two different things; however, from the 1960’s, the ideal of marketing and ‘promo’ have remained nearly the same.

Pre-1950

Although the realisation of the power behind the music video appeared in the 1930’s, there were notably earlier stages of cinematography that toyed with the idea of visual video and music combining as one. In the 1920’s and 1930’s, Oscar Fischinger was one of these few individuals to begin to explore synchronisations and visual interpretations, creating abstract videos until his work later developed into the Disney film, Fantasia (1939). The earliest example of an open screen of experimental cinematography or very early music videos is ‘The Panarom’, which played pre-set, looping videos in a disturbing sense of colour; whilst thousands of the screen projection was sold with different ranges of pre-set music videos through 1939 until 1946, until it was challenged by the television.

Post 1950’s

The major music video break through truly began on the arrival of television and broadcasting channels in the 1950’s. Television coverage of pop music from the 50’s is the main conception of where and when music videos came into appeal, yet as the teenage audience in America and slowly worldwide began to change towards the 1960’s to new genre styles, the importance of airing pre-recorded live performances known as ‘promos’ became increasingly popular; this was more so cortical for chart based shows (several famous bands were known to do this, such as The Beetles and The Who). It wasn’t until towards the end of the 60’s that other artists and directors began to experiment with the style of music videos – at this point, all music videos had been live recordings or ‘promos’ – and slowly, narrative had been the new innovation to music video. The Monkees (USA) for example, experimented with narrative, conventions, comedy, performance and most of all, surrealism; with new artists looking at different methods of music videos, and re-exploring cinematography, videos slowly began to take on an artist’s form. Within a brief few years, abstract had also been introduced.

From the success of ‘promos’ and television chart shows, programming became more influential and by the 70’s and 80’s, cable and new shows were being introduced worldwide however it wasn’t until the idea was run to create a channel which ran constant music, aimed to attract young audiences; up until then, showing ‘promos’ or music videos, had not yet found the success to make its money back, however with having one network constantly running music videos for popular programming, all that became an issue was paying back royalties. New networks that set up after that point often made a profit within the first month. Thus, MTV became a large hit, broadcasted from Warner satellite feed in 1981 was a huge success in America and eventually made it to Europe by the late 80’s.

From the 80’s, image began to dominate what music videos were funded and aired on music networks. Shortly however, it quickly became clear that a white dominance act had established itself on most networks and whilst Michael Jackson’s Thriller and Bad was the only work aired by a black artist until the very end of the 80’s. This had been occurrence of target audience, convention and genre style as most works produced by black artists was generally rap music which had caused demographics in viewing. Eventually they were called out for ‘’blatant racism’’. This was the influence of image; however it was also shown for female artists and for Madonna particularly, allowed her to find great success in single sales of her songs through a medium of close-ups and suggestive shots.

Hitting the midpoint of the 1980’s, special effects were beginning to be used in music videos. Produced from the British studio ‘Aardman Animation’ Peter Gabriel’s song ‘Sedgehammer’ was one of the very first music videos to explore the new avenue of image, conventional appearance as well as the new possibilities of narrative. From this point on, a gradual increase of special effects was being used in music videos and post 2005, found a steady up-climb to including special effects into pop music video conventions.

In 1995 came the largest budgeted music video to date: Michael Jackson’s Scream. Costing $7 million to produce, this the largest amount spent on a music video and has a notable lengthy run time, however other artists have come close in terms of budget, the ‘image’ idol Madonna, had produced to her song Bedtime Story, which cost $5 million in production. The 90’s brought in music video’s using larger budgets, but also brought about the expansion of its influence as MTV spread to India and Mandarin over the decade.

Post 2000

Whilst the methods of media was slowly being introduced to the rapid growth of new technologies in 2000, there was relatively nothing that shifted the art of the music video until 2005, when YouTube was launched which suddenly opened up the ability for everything with an internet capable device and internet, to watch any and all music videos available – immediately, sharing sparked, jumping through other vide and social networking websites. Immediately, artists could see the immediate success they could find with a wider base of viewers that extended worldwide. 2008 was the real flourish to this success however as Weezer’s video Pork and Beans slammed attention from online viewers through the likes of pop culture celebrities selected from the website itself – immediately the success put Weezer at the top of their career and into charts. From this point on however, and since Google’s merger with YouTube, a debate has sparked between the concepts of music videos on YouTube to be a product or advertisement – in recent years however, the ideal of advertisement and marketing has appealed further.

30 Seconds to Mars’ music video Kings and Queens proved the marketing appeal of the power of social websites in 2009; upon the releasing day of the song, the video was uploaded to YouTube where it received over one hundred million views – ultimately resulting it to maintain a featured spot in the iTunes Store and charts for a week. Returning back to artistic style however, the video differs little more than earlier established music videos, the form adopted by Rock artists changes between staged performance and a narrative sequence, altering between shot types and more so image representation in the video, there was nothing sceptically new about the video, rather it was its sheer success that created an increasing tangent of music videos forming a basis for marketing singles or albums. By 2010, Lady Gaga’s music video Bad Romance made headlines after becoming the most viewed video on YouTube, massively rocketing the video, single, album and artist popularity; later in 2011, this record was broken by Justin Bieber’s song Baby which received 660 million views. Whilst it is obvious that social sharing and viral marketing aids the reception for the artist themselves, not much is changing relatively speaking of the actual music videos themselves but the technological, easier and generally better presented methods that is now widely accessible; what is obvious however, is the return of pop music as a favoured style as in the 1950’s.

There may be a clear evolution of ‘the music video’ and the artistic advancements it has taken over the past 9 decades has influenced culture as a whole, however in recent years the styles or advancements of such have not really changed – instead of being ‘promos’ or an addition to a rock bands album, music videos have become a marketing technique which explores narrative, content, image, representation and conventions to better promote the artists and sales, or as the 30 Seconds to Mars music video This Is War suggests, publicize a mass message to a worldwide audience. Whilst there is deeper meaning, there is also another dimensional exploration to the artist’s fantasies and ultimately a stronger recognition of cinematography.