Music Videos

1.  The main purpose of a music video is to sell the
song and invoke a reaction from the viewers in
order for them to remember the significance of
the song forever. Also to give the listeners a
better understanding of the song, in case the
video is narrative, and most times to entertain
the viewers. Furthermore, creating a
memorable visual for the song, increases its
chances to sell and market the proposes of the
exposure and expansion of the artist’s profile.
However, there are some people arguing that
the end result is only to promote the artist and
the music.

2.  In 1894, sheet music publishers Edward B.
Marks and Joe Stern hired electrician
George Thomas and various performers to
promote sales of their song “ The Little Lost
Child”. Thomas using a then “magic
lantern”, projected a series of still images on
a screen simultaneous to live performances,
which would become a popular form of
entertainment known as the illustrated
song, the first step toward music videos.

4.  The first music video was filmed at Thomas Edison’s
studio in 1895 on a device that was developed in his
lab, the Kinetophone. The device was invented by
William Dickson and showed moving pictures which
was fitted with a photograph. In the film Dickson
plays music on a violin from a popular
operetta with two men dancing beside him. The
soundtrack for the video was
recorded separately on a was
cylinder which sent missing for
several decades
until it turned up at the Edison
National Historical Site in the
early 1960’s. The video was
then completed with the
music in 1998, however it was never released due to
the Kinetophone, never catching with customers.

5.  Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ was listed by The
Guinness World Record in 2006 as “the most
successful music video” selling over 9
million. Moreover,
in 2009 the video was
inducted into the
National Film Registry of
the Library of Congress, the
first music video to ever
receive this honour. This was for being
“culturally” and historically significant.

6.  At the early years, since 1920’s until the 1970’s there were no
music videos. Then it wasn’t about promoting a single or
telling a story. There were only live concerts and later on TV
channels were you could watch live performances. However,
at the late 1970’s everything started to change. Artists started
to work with directors and producers in order to produce
music videos. At that time music videos contained only some
kind of live performances where the song was the only thing
telling the story. At the same time, TV channels such as MTV
was having music videos playing. Therefore, after music
videos went mainstream and the internet started to take over
our lives, we now have music videos which are very similar
with mini-clips, where now the story is almost never being told
by the song but by the music videoclip and the performance
of the artist. In that way artists have succeeded into
promoting their singles and their image, in order to make
more profit.

7.  1926 – 1959: Talkies, soundies and shorts
 1950s: Early music clips
 1960 – 1973: Promotional & Concert clips
 1974 – 1980: Beginnings of music TV
 1981 – 1991: Music videos go Mainstream
 1992 – 2004: Rise of the Directors
 2005 – Present: Internet becomes video-
friendly.

8.  The one and simple reason why videos
were developed and are still developing, is
because the artists and their crew have
one goal; try not to get the viewers bored.
They need to keep them interested with the
music videos that they produce
and all the special things that
they include within, such as
special effects or scripts. However,
one argument is, do they grow
alongside with their audience
and change their style to target
them specifically or do they stick
to what they have and wait for the next
generation to come?

9.  The way we watch music videos now has
changed a lot since the 1920’s. Now we can
simply click a button and watch music videos
online, but it wasn’t so easy back then. During
1920’s and 1950’s, in order to watch a music
video you would have to go to a ‘soundie’
musical film, and from 1960’s until 1990’s you
were able to watch a music video on your TV
at this point, usually on shows such as Top of
the Pops from 1981 MTV. Where nowadays you
can easily go onto any music website or app
as YouTube and ITunes and type in any music
video you want to watch.

10.  The advanced progress in technology has meant that
music videos now include better effects and editing
whereas back when the first music video was made, they
didn’t have nothing but a recording
device. This was a huge
advantage because it is
more appealing to an
audience and is more
enjoyable to watch. Music
videos today are a huge
helping hand to promote a
certain artist or song, it seems
the more outrageous and odd the better. Certain
examples of modern artists who use this method to
promote their ‘image’ are Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Taylor
Swift and Miley Cyrus.

11.  Music videos used to be very long, like a
mini-film of 15 minutes, where nowadays
they are between 3-6 minutes, depending
on the genre and the artist of the music. In
addition, music videos are repetitive,
meaning that they will always have a base
track which is a fundamental scene that
the music video will usually revert back to.
Therefore, most videos will have some form
of structure or narrative which may tell the
story of the song; this is called illustration
and is portrayed in a variety of music
videos.

12.  Elvis Presley
Born January 8th, 1935 (died August 16th, 1977)
Key Tracks "Mystery Train," "Hound Dog," "Suspicious Minds"
Influenced Bono, Bruce Springsteen
There is a difference between people who sing and those who take
that voice to another, otherworldly place, who create a euphoria
within themselves. It's transfiguration. His voice was confident,
insinuating and taking no prisoners. He had those great
whoops and diving moments, those sustains that swoop
down to the note like a bird of prey. You can hear that
all over Led Zeppelin. Elvis was driven by passion. "Anyway
You Want Me" is one of the most moving vocal
performances we’ve ever heard. There is no touching
"Jailhouse Rock" and the stuff recorded at the King Creole
sessions. However, the modernity of the RCA stuff was
really great. "I Need Your Love Tonight" and "A Big Hunk o' Love"
were so powerful those sessions sounded like the greatest place to
be on the planet.

13.  Michael Jackson
Born August 29th, 1958
Key Tracks: "I Want You Back" (the Jackson 5), "Billie Jean," "Man in
the Mirror" (solo)
Influenced Justin Timberlake, Chris Brown, Usher.
Michael Jackson is a perfect storm of innate talent and training. His
singing as a child is astounding: He just nailed "I Want You Back"
there's maybe one bum note on that song, which is
crazy, because he was only 11 years old. One of the
key elements of his style is how he uses his voice as an
instrument. His signature grunts "ugh," "ah" and all
that are rhythmic things that guitar players or
drummers usually do. He's one of the most rhythmic
singers ever. When somebody gets as big as he did,
you lose sight of how avant-garde and revolutionary they are, but
Michael Jackson pushed the boundaries of pop and R&B.

14.  Eminem
On his 1999 major-label debut, The Slim Shady the Detroit-based white rapper
was willing to put anybody in his verbal crosshairs, including not only his
detractors but himself, Kim, his wife and the mother of his daughter, and his
own mother, who later ended up filing a defamation of character lawsuit
against him. The following year's doubly venomous The Marshall Mathers raised
the bar even more, drawing intense protest
from gay, lesbian, religious, and women's groups,
even as it became the fastest-selling rap album of
all time and topped many critics' year-end best-of lists.
He released his first solo album, Infinite, on the local
Web Entertainment
label in 1996. It failed to garner much attention, but
the follow up, 1998's The Slim Shady, so impressed
super-producer Dr. Dre that he signed Eminem to his
Interscope imprint, Aftermath. The EP was expanded
into the Dre-coproduced The Slim Shady, which debuted on the pop chart at
Number Three in February 1999 and went on to sell three million copies and win
Eminem a Grammy for Best Rap Album. Like the EP before it, the album
showcased Eminem's maniacal alter ego Slim Shady a homicidal comedian
through whom Mathers enacted his most outrageous and perverse revenge
fantasies. The catchy lead single "My Name Is" was a huge crossover success,
climbing to Number 36 on the Hot 100 and eventually winning a Grammy for
Best Rap Solo Performance.

15.  Madonna
She is the most media-savvy American pop star since Bob Dylan
and, until she toned down her press-baiting behaviour in the
Nineties, she was the most consistently controversial one since
Elvis Presley. Her pleasure-celebrating dance music and outré é
videos gave feminism a much-needed
makeover throughout the Eighties, smashing
sexual boundaries, making eroticism a crucial
pop-song element, and challenging social and
religious mores. Madonna later positioned
herself as a doting mother and charitable
international citizen, but to her detractors, she
merely reinforced the notion of "woman as
plaything," turning the clock back on conventional feminism two
decades. One thing, however, is rarely disputed: At nearly every
turn, she has maintained firm control over her career and image.

16.  Shakira
When Shakira shimmied her way onto MTV in 2001 with a
steamy video for a slick, cookie-cutter dance-pop song,
some people associated the Colombian singer with her
American pop-music contemporaries Britney
Spears and Christina Aguilera. But the stylistic
breadth of Shakira's music elements of folk,
Middle Eastern and traditional Latin styles over
a foundation of rock and pop gave her a
degree of credibility the American teen
queens lacked. What's more, when Shakira
broke through in the United States, she'd already been a
huge star across Latin America since 1996.