Research: The History of the Music Video

To help me in the creation of my music video I researched the history of Music Videos. Below is my essay on my research.

Music videos evolved from short promo videos that would be made to promote new songs. Promo videos became increasingly common during the 60’s and 70’s when television began to devote more airtime and programming towards the music industry with programmes such as “Top of the Pops”. These videos would normally be simple videos of the band performing which they could use on programmes such as Top of the Pops if the band couldn’t be there to perform live.

In 1975 the popular rock band “Queen” released their hit song “Bohemian Rhapsody”. The complexity of the song meant that it was very hard to mime successfully, this along with the fact that the band didn’t like to mime on Top of the Pops meant they didn’t want to appear on the show to perform it. This meant their song would instead be played whilst a dance group performed on stage, the group however didn’t like this either so they organised a promo video of the song to be made. The resulting video is widely regarded as the first real music video as it contained original footage of the band, and used special effects and editing to create more of a representation of the song rather than a simple recording of the band performing. This set it out from other promos of the time and other bands also began to create more creative music videos that helped to tell a narrative in the song or simply to entertain.

In 1981 MTV (Music Television) was launched. It played continuous music videos from the bands and songs that were currently topping the charts. It operated similar to a radio Top 40 show with VJ’s (Video-Jockeys) introducing a video before it was played. As the channel gained popularity more record labels recognised the potential of the channel and began to produce more and more extravagant videos for MTV to play. The video for Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” was a huge hit on MTV, this video along with many of Jackson’s other videos helped to increase the popularity of MTV hugely as audiences tuned in to see them. Michael Jackson’s video often showed the singer playing the part of a character in a story representing the song and involved many of his famous dance moves and routines. The most famous of Jackson’s videos was “Thriller”, this video was more of a mini-film lasting a mammoth fourteen minutes in length. The video was a horror film spoof and used special effects to turn Michael Jackson and his dancers into zombies and then turning the singer into a werewolf. The song was hugely popular as was the music video and remains one of the most iconic videos to date. The video helped to show again how a good music video could boost a singers career and album sales.

Since its creation MTV has spawned many sister channels catering for different kinds of music and many other music channels showing music videos have developed. As MTV’s popularity began to soar then channel also began to show regular programming and began to produce its own shows, most of which were based around music and musicians. The growing attraction of MTV and other music channels led to teenagers of the 1990’s onwards being labelled “The MTV Generation” due to their music based lifestyles and their imitation of the behaviour and cultures displayed in music videos, especially those of rap and R&B genres. The music video had a huge impact on society as more than ever music fans could now get an insight into their favourite bands as the videos began to show singers lifestyles, fashion and behaviour.