A0B1: History of Music Video

Music videos have changed dramatically over the years, due to advances in technology such as television and later YouTube. Strawberry Fields by The Beatles was referred to as a ‘promotional film’ at the time of release but it was one of the first examples of what would become known as music videos. It is often credited as being the first music video, however it was only after the success of the Bohemian Rhapsody ‘promotional video’ that record companies would regularly produce ‘promotional videos’ for an artists single releases. The video for Bohemian Rhapsody was created primarily because the song was too difficult for Queen to perform live. An interesting fact is that many of the effects in the video were actually achieved while recording rather than during the editing process. For example, the cascade effect on Freddie Mercurys face was created by pointing the camera at a monitor, which gave visual feedback. Whereas nowadays music videos can have budgets of millions of pounds, the budget for the Bohemian Rhapsody video was less than £5000. Despite the success of this video, many musicians still had negative views towards music videos, rock stars in particular. They believed that music videos deterred from the music itself. On the other hand some artists embraced the opportunities which music videos provided. One of these artists was Madonna. Previously an artist would have to tour to become a worldwide star, but Madonna thought that she could achieve this if she put enough effort into her music videos. Later, in the 90’s many music videos were inspired by films. Some examples include Robbie Williams’ Millenium which was inspired by Sean Connery in the James Bond film series and Queen’s Radio Ga Ga which was inspired by Metropolis. It is popular belief that the concept of Michael Jackson’s Beat It was based on West Side Story, however it was actually based on director Bob Giraldi’s time growing up in Paterson, New Jersey. Another Michael Jackson song, ‘Thriller’, wasn’t a typical music video. It was a short story with a plot and characters. It was the first music video to sell for an affordable price which prompted the creation of home video. Also, ‘Billie Jean’ was the first time a black face had been seen on MTV.

A big changing point in the history of music videos was the creation of MTV which was founded by Michael Nesmith in August 1981.Bob Pittman was the co-founder of MTV. The opportunity for MTV came about because a company had a live feed but nothing to broadcast. The first track that MTV played was Video Killed the Radio Star, which was a ironic choice considering the title of the track. When MTV started, music videos didn’t have to be created just for singles. They could be created for any song and the crazier the videos was, the better. A group called Devo made lots of videos for MTV but they only made videos, not songs. 1985 saw cutting edge computer graphics and animation and also CD’s were available in shops. These new technologies boosted the popularity of the music video because the computer graphics could make music videos even more interesting and because music videos were a good marketing tool for an artist’s songs. 3 years after MTV began, they had to start making money and convince record companies that MTV could sell records. They were able to sell lots of Buggle albums which were only played on MTV, which convinced the record companies. Artists began to use music videos more and more because they saw how successful they could be.
There were also legal and ethical constraints for music videos. Madonna’a ‘Justify My Love’ and The Prodigy’s ‘Smack My Bitch Up’ were both banned. ‘Justify My Love’ was seen as too sexually explicit. The controversy of the song led to it being released as a vdeo-single and become the highest selling video single of all time. ‘Smack My Bitch Up’ was banned because of fierce criticism for misogyny despite the ending of the video.