The History of Music Videos

Soundies – ‘3-on-1 Reel’

A Film jukebox, used between 1940 and 1946 in cafés, bars and clubs. Each soundie would have up to 6 videos on it, and have music form all genres as well as some comedy skits or musical skits. Artists that popularised soundies include, Nat King Cole, Doris Day, Spike Jones, Anita O’Day, Alan Ladd and Merle Travis. As the only way to distribute music promotion videos at the time, soundies stars became very popular as if gave them a face and a performance style.

Music Video in Film

Film was the only way for an artist to distribute a promotional video, this meant they had to portray a character, examples include Elvis Presley in Jailhouse Rock (1957) and Viva Las Vegas (1964), and Cliff Richard in Summer Holiday (1963). Only well established stars could afford to be in films and therefore publish a music video. In 1964, The Beatles became the first act to star in a film as themselves and feature music videos in that format. The bands songs where the soundtrack for A Hard Day’s Night, as a giant promotional video. The feature was a documentary styles, meaning there was a better association with the artist as apposed to a character of a Hollywood film.

The First Music Video

In 1967, Bob Dylan released a Beatles ‘Hard Days Night style’ documentary film of his 1965 tour of Britain. The opening sequence is considered the first music video in the style we know today, and although part of the film, it stands alone as a segment. The Subterranean Homesick Blues video features just one static camera shot and one setting, in black and white Dylan holds cards with the lyrics of the song on and drops them to the floor.

ABBA

In 1974, just after Eurovision, Swedish pop megastars ABBA released the video for Waterloo, which, quite similarly to Bob Dylan, had only one setting and not much movement, only ABBA had camera zooms and panning. 4 years later, Take a Chance on me was released was in a similar setting, only this time because of technological developments the video featured split screens and cutting in a much more updated fashion than their previous videos. A very similar colour scheme for the outfits was used, showing the association the video helped the band create and how the music promotion video allowed a physical identity to be created. The 70’s was the beginning of the stand alone video, with shows like Top of the Pops (1964) taking off and allowing around 30 minutes a week for music promotional videos and live acts.

The Legacy of a Music Video

Queen released Bohemian Rhapsody in 1975, and were told it was too long to be a success as it couldn’t be played on radio at 5 minutes 55 seconds. It debuted in the high 20’s on the UK charts, and once the video was released it went straight to number 1 and stayed there for 9 weeks, becoming the Christmas number 1 that year. This was the first time that evidence of a music videos importance was really shown. The video experimented with special effects and a combination of live and static elements as well as unusual lighting and staging. It’s now famous for it’s iconic scene and has been recreated and parodied many times since (including a version by the muppets).

Michael Jackson

Thriller (1983) At 13 minutes 47 seconds the promotional music video was more of a movie than the music video we know to day. It cost $1’000’000 to produce and is full of intertextual references to cinema and the ‘thriller’ genre. The video includes different diegesis levels and is packed with lyrical sound and visual clues, all of which have become prominent as current music video conventions.Bad (1987) became iconic and was parodied by the likes of Weird Al Yankovic and thousands of others, the version on Jacksons Vevo YouTube channel has 165.5 million views and was uploaded only 6 years ago, after his death.These videos have gone on to become iconic of the music and the artist, an example of this is in a Glee episode dedicated to the star, where each of the songs performed have direct relations and reflections of the original music video.

Breaking Conventions

In 2012, Bob Dylan released Duquesne Whistle with a video that broke most of the standard music video conventions. The leading boy didn’t get the girl, there was no real live aspect despite Bob Dylan being in the video, and the two diegesis are actually the same one, coming together at the end. Dylan essentially created a short film as opposed to a music video, he does this again with song Beyond Here Lies Nothin’.

Modern Video Distribution MTV (8 diffferent Channels), Viva, Box, Kiss, Magic , Chartshow.tv , The vault, Scuzz, Kerrange, Vintage, Now, Clubland, Heart, Capital, KeepItCountry, these are a few examples of the available channels to consumer music videos, as well as on youtube, artists websites or tv advertisements. Most bigger artist such as Rihanna, Adele, One Direction, and Ariana Grande, (generally in pop music) tend to reach over 5 million views in the first 24 hours of their music video being live, the current records for the highest view count within 24 hours is Adele with Hello at the end of October 2014, who reached 27.7 views in 24 hours.