By: Emily Clark
The music video is a staple of the music genre. It simultaneously acts as an art form, allowing fantastical storylines to take place to a four-minute song, and a promotional tool, exercising the tools of advertising to sell the song. The music video has taken on many forms and given artists the ability to breach the limits of the recorded track. Where did it start, and what is it like today?
The progression of the music video is long. In the 1920s and 1930s, the art form was used as a promotional tool for popular blues and jazz musicians. Most videos were literal interpretations of the lyrics in order to craft the authenticity of the singer. Jimmie Rodgers, for example, was recorded singing his song “Waiting for a Train” while, shockingly enough, waiting for a train. This image was used to sell the idea to the working class audience that this successful man playing a personally-inscribed guitar was struggling just like them. And they bought the act and the music in spades.
With television, artists could broadcast to a consistently larger audience. By the 1950s, Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley were entering the homes of America, thrusting their hips suggestively and playing rock and roll music. In a time when dance moves were confined to strict, antiseptic ballroom, these musicians’ sexually charged and spontaneous movements, along with the loud and jarring music they were moving to, was extremely controversial. Television provided a format to broadcast them to the nation, and a chance for the combination of music and film to evolve even more.
During the 1960s artists like The Beatles with “Strawberry Fields Forever” and Bob Dylan with “Subterranean Homesick Blues” did away with literal interpretation entirely (or in Dylan’s case, turned it up to 11). The music video was no longer a mere promotional tool but a storytelling artform. With MTV and the music-video mania of the 1980s and 1990s, visual storytelling took the front seat to lyrics or literal interpretation.
Though the death of 24-hour video coverage on MTV spelled death for the glory days of music videos, the tool is still an important part of the music industry. The Internet has put business, more than ever, in the hands of artists. You don’t need a suit to get radio play; just post a five-dollar video of your band dancing on treadmills and go viral. The importance of the music video can still be seen in the dance crazes songs generate, the existence of VEVO, and the fact that music videos still get millions of views.
With the addition of new technologies, from the kinetoscope, to the Soundie, to television, to the Internet, the music video has evolved into its own art form. No longer does it consist of only a literal interpretation used to promote a caricature of the artist; it establishes the artist as an individual, recreates the possible meanings of the song, and allows for a new story to be conveyed. As the Internet continues to manipulate both the business and the distribution of music and video, the art form will no doubt continue to transform.
Source:
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