Research - History of Music Videos

Music videos have changed drastically over the past 50 years. Modern music videos portray different themes compared to music videos from 1960’s to the 1980’s. Traditional videos had basic editing, simple shots and a clear star image with no narrative, just performance. This is seen as very basic compared to today’s music videos.

This is a timeline I made with all the key dates from 1929, going through the modern era (which was in the 1950’s to the mid 1980’s when Michael Jacksons ‘thriller’ came about and shocked audiences with the terrifying imagery and narrative to the song, which was never seen before), all the way to the era we are currently in called the ‘Golden Era’. I believe that the first music video was from the Beatles between 1950 – 1960. However, others believe that Queen made the first music video in 1975, but that wasn’t their intention.

How have music videos changed over time?

First of all, music videos have changed over time due to the attraction of audiences, genres in the music industry forming with new artists, purposes in music and their videos and ‘a voice’. Audiences have changed what they are interested in watching over the years, for example, a lot of imagery such as sexual contact, nudity and violence would be censored in music videos in the 1970’s onwards. But, as soon as the golden era came about, less imagery was censored and more audiences became used to the explicit imagery. More genres formed as more artists came about with their own unique style, for example, Michael Jackson is called the ‘King of Pop’ as he brought the Pop genre to the music industry with his unique style of music. Loads of artists/bands looked up to Michael Jackson so they created similar music which could categorized next to his style of music. As music videos became more popular through the internet and music channels, artists started coming up with music videos which were narrative and concept based, to make audiences more interested and engaged into the video.  Technology has helped music videos change and progress over time massively, due to technology itself improving in quality. Editing has become a lot more creative with the impress software’s that are used by music video editors.

Why is it important to know about the history of music videos?

It’s important to know the history of music videos because as a student, it helps me to understand the development of music videos and how performance, concept and narrative has come about. Another reason for the history of music videos being important is that there was a debate about who made the first music video, so my judgement of this has helped me understand more of what actually is considered as a music video by following the 8 points from Goodwin’s theory.

Who made the first music video and why?

The Beatles made the first music video called 'A Hard Days Night' because their music video meets all the conventions in Goodwins theory and was released for the purpose of being a music video. This proves that the first music video is this music video because of the purpose and conventions which reach all the expectations of the creation of a music video and the release of a music video.