Since their rise in the 1980’s, music videos have become increasingly vital for the promotion of new music and new artists arriving in the music industry. Music videos give fans and audiences the ability to enjoy their favourite artists without having to go to a live performance. They accompany popular tracks and offer a performance, narrative, an interpretation of lyrics or something completely abstract to entertain the audience. Although music videos have, unarguably, boosted the music industry and artists sales, it might be argued that they have also damaged it. With music videos being so popular, the artists looks, fashion and dance have become much more critical, and it may seem as if their vocal talent is less important.
There has been several stages that have influences music videos as we know them now. In the late 1920’s the first kind of music videos “talkies” were created, they were short films that used the artists track on top of them performing. After this in around the 1940’s promotional clips were introduced. They were one song films and often used codes and conventions from musical films from earlier years. These were very highly influential and are still referred to in the contemporary music industry. An example would be Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ which takes conventions from 50’s horror films.
In the 50’s musical feature films were introduced and within these the artists would play a character in a narrative. These were becoming global and helped artists to become popular all over the world. Elvis was an artist that used these kinds of films, however the films had to represent the artist in a light that the record label wanted them to be seen in. For example Elvis was involved in rock and roll, however the 50’s was very neat and trimmed, the record label wanted to Elvis to fit into this look, so that people would perhaps like him more and want to buy his music.
In the 60’s the Beatles rose to fame and were popular all over the world. They like other artists before them released promotional clips and feature films. However, the Beatles played themselves in these films and in 1964 they released a mock documentary “A Hard Days Night.” This involved the Beatles performing to an audience what would be a ‘typical day of being a Beatle’ and also included some comedy scenes. The Beatles began to release more music promo videos including ‘Help’, the Beatles used these videos to maintain their success in the industry as they could no longer tour the world. Again, like in the feature films, the Beatles played the characters that the fans wanted to see. The Beatles could be argued as the band that was the most influential to the shift into the modern music industry.
