HISTORY OF MUSIC VIDEOGeorge Blake

BACKGROUND

A music video is a videotaped performance of a recorded popular song, usually accompanied by dancing and visual images interpreting the lyrics.

They are often produced for promotional or artistic purposes.

Music videos in the modern day are often used primarily as a source of marketing and promotion

1926-1950S

In 1926, with the arrival of "talkies" many musical short films were produced. Vitaphone shorts (produced by Warner Bros.) featured many bands, vocalists and dancers. Spooney Melodies in 1930 was the first true musical video series.

The Panoram jukebox with eight three-minute soundies were popular in taverns and night spots, but the fad faded during World War II.

In the late 1950s the Scopitone, a visual jukebox, was invented in France and short films were produced by many French artists, such as Serge Gainsbourg, Françoise Hardy, Jacques Brel, and Jacques Dutronc to accompany their songs.

THE BEATLES

In 1964, The Beatles starred in their first feature film A Hard Day's Night, directed by Richard Lester. Shot in black-and-white and presented as a mock documentary

The musical sequences furnished basic templates on which countless subsequent music videos were modelled.

THE INTRODUCTION OF THE MUSIC VIDEO The first music video released was a1966 clip for Bob

Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues" filmed by D. A. Pennebaker was featured in Pennebaker's Dylan film documentary Dont Look Back.

Eschewing any attempt to simulate performance or present a narrative, the clip shows Dylan standing in a city back alley, silently shuffling a series of large cue cards (bearing key words from the song's lyrics).

The Who featured in several promotional clips in this period, beginning with their 1965 clip for I Can't Explain. Their plot clip for Happy Jack (1966) shows the band acting like a gang of thieves.

TOP OF THE POPS

The long-running British TV show Top of the Pops began playing music videos in the late 1970s, although the BBC placed strict limits on the number of 'outsourced' videos TOTP could use.

Therefore a good video would increase a song's sales as viewers hoped to see it again the following week.

MTV

In 1981, the U.S. video channel MTV launched, airing "Video Killed the Radio Star“, by The Buggles and beginning an era of 24-hour-a-day music on television.

With this new outlet for material, the music video would, by the mid-1980s, grow to play a central role in popular music marketing.

Many important acts of this period, most notably Adam and the Ants, Duran Duran and Madonna, owed a great deal of their success to the skillful construction and seductive appeal of their videos.