Essay On Music Videos

‘Music videos have changed drastically over time and are now unrecognizable from their historical counterparts.’ Explore this statement and discuss how true you believe this statement is. Use a range of older and contemporary examples. Use some basic media theory to back up your ideas.

There are many ways in which music video’s impact us on everyday life. In this essay I will explore some of the ways which music video has changed over the years and in my own and a lot of peoples eyes, it has changed incredibly, from the technological side of music video and the attitudes and emotions shown in music videos. Some of the big icons in the music industry are heroes to your average daily citizen and watching them on the TV can change people’s moods massively. Music videos are most commonly made for promotional ideas or marketing aspects of singers or musicians careers. They are generally a short averaged at 3 minute clips on the song; in most cases this will have the singer in the video. This is designed to get the song across to the public so that they will download the song. Music video’s have been going on for years but they become more dominant in the 1980’s as this was the ‘Electric 80’s’ during this decade a lot of music was played in clubs and therefore when people went back home after the night out they wanted to hear the music and using music videos for people to recognize the songs was a great way of promoting the song. There are a wide range of music videos such as: animated music videos which incorporate characters from TV or just fictional characters made up for the song, they can be video clips of a live performance from the singer or musician or there can be in a lot of cases, a short video of the person singing the song in different settings and areas.

The music video form was popularized by the MTV cable network in about 1981 and began to have wide popularity and influence in the early 1980s. By the 1990s many hundreds of videos, representing a cross-section of musical forms—from traditional to experimental rock, heavy metal to hip hop—were being produced yearly. Although music videos have usually been aimed at a teenage audience, many videos of ballads or "soft rock" songs are now directed at an older group of viewers. Since shortly after their inception, the style and content of music videos have strongly influenced advertising, television, film, and popular culture as a whole. In the early 1980’s Michael Jackson made what was said the be the most successful music video ever made, with thriller. Thriller was a 13 minute long incredible video that stole headlines and grabbed people’s attention on a global basis. Selling 9 million copies of the CD video album thriller became the quickest and most successful music video of all time and in 2006 made the Guinness world book of records for the most successful music video. In this video Michael Jackson gained a lot of attention for his dance moves and soon after he became referred to as the King of pop. This music video showed a massive change in the industry within just a few years, one of the ways was through the technology. New cameras were being used in a short space over time and this allowed Jackson and the producers of thriller to make the perfect video. All of the costumes and effects were used greatly in thriller such as the zombies breaking through the earthy soil and the smoke coming off of the graveyards to give it a chilled effect. Jacksons film was also used for promotional purposes as well, to gain more people to go to the cinema as at the start of the video he is seen watching a film in a typical American cinema. Before this was released there wasn’t many music videos that had enough class to be as big as Jackson could be. He also showed a more energetic approach to the audience by his dancing, which engaged more attention that the older music videos as they were stereotypical of just standing there singing or dancing very slowly as where Jackson was a high tempo dancer and so were the crew that was used in thriller.

Music videos such as ‘Video killed the radio star’ by the buggles and ‘In the air tonight’ by Phil Collins had a huge effect on people in the 80’s., they had a range of emotions. Emotions are important in the Phil Collins video as you can see the anger through the singers face and these emotions go to the viewer as well. People would argue that in these older music videos you feel more in contact with the song. Music videos that are more recent, such as Robbie Williams – Rock DJ, and Britney Spears womanizer show this. Many people would say that there is no real emotion in these songs as they are more informal. They are more about just partying rather than actually having a real meaning, the Robbie Williams video trying to just impress the woman and the Britney Spears video doing the same to men. Even in this short amount of time, about 20 years, music videos have changed drastically; from the video quality to the meaning of the song it has had an effect on people and music fans everywhere. In the music videos from the late 70’s early 80’s there wasn’t much craziness in the videos, like in the Buggles song they stand there for a very long while just singing and we can see how it has changed in the technological aspect over the years simply by looking at the Rock DJ song by Robbie Williams as he actually strips his skin off in the clip and dances naked. This is great for music video because it engages the viewer more and people who may have thought that music videos were boring before may feel that they are more exciting the watch now.

The Britney spears video uses the male gaze theory brilliantly, the way music video has changed using something as simple as this is great. The video will simply get a lot more views and downloads simply due to the fact that men are more interested in looking at Britney dancing during the video than they are the actual song. Stereotypically men would find girls with curves sexually attractive and in this video the camera shots used show Britney’s curves fantastically. This wasn’t used as much in the older videos as it was said that men were not as sly about looking at woman as they are now, they would shout out comments at woman as where now men would sit and watch a girl showing off her body in a music video whilst they are sitting in front of a TV screen. This theory is very effective in the music video as it grabs people’s attention and it keeps it throughout the whole video especially men. The gaze also states that women can look at their selves in a sexual way, in the womanizer video Britney spears seems to act in a sexy sort of manor because she knows that she is good looking, showing that she uses her looks to her advantage to gain male attention. It is thought that if a series of questions were asked after a music video with a good looking girl in it then the male would not realise some of the questions asked. Like in womanizer if they asked maybe what colour shoes was she wearing at a certain point then the male would not know as they were too focused on looking at the body of the female.

This theory is also effective in the Robbie Williams music video as well, in the clip we see a lot of Robbie Williams posing and then he strips off he’s shirt typically for the ladies to see his body. Again the same as the womanizer film it shows that he knows he’s good looking and uses it to his advantage within the clip. A lot of woman would be caught out looking at his body rather than watching the video and listening to the song.

Both of these films used the male gaze theory showing again that music videos have changed so much over the years because they never used to be as self-absorbed in the old music videos. A lot of it used to be just the band or artist standing by a microphone singing either recorded at a live concert or recorded in a studio but that was generally the case until the late 1970’s early 1980’s. where  thriller came in and this meant a lot of competition for music videos to be more exciting and engaging than the typical others on the market.

In conclusion I think that music video has changed massively over time, even over the space of a few years, when ‘Video killed the radio star’ was released it dominated MTV and then within a few years an empire was built around Michael Jacksons Thriller film as it was one of the longest music video’s ever made and it was simply on another level to any music video that had ever been made before and it is arguably the best music video ever made and in my own opinion I feel that it is the best music video ever made. The male gaze theory I don’t disagree with because it is shown that in a lot of female music videos they try their hardest to gain male attention and it’s too stereotypical as they gaining a lot more downloads from men just because they are good looking when there are more successful music videos that aren’t evolved around good looking women. Video killed the radio star and womanizer both use the male gaze theory as they both show woman that are sexually attractive with their curves and make up, backing the point that they are doing so to gain male attention for the attractiveness of the ladies as well as the attention they are getting for the video itself.

I believe that the statement is partly true with how music videos have changed so much because they have most definitely changed a great amount, in terms of the technology used as the equipment has become much better over the years, the actors and dancing has become a lot better as shown in the Thriller video and due to there being more dancing classes and training available, and the attitudes and emotions shown to music video has changed as well. I don’t agree that the historical counterpart has been lost as music videos are still quite similar to old music videos as shown by the male gaze theory, that sense of male attention for women has been a key aspect of music video over the years and it will always be the same and never change.