History of Music Videos

The first music video - 1894

•        Music videos began well over a century ago with American electrician-slash-photographer George Thomas’ ‘Illustrated Song’. He was the first to pair images to music.

•        It was a series of still images printed onto some glass slides, they were coloured in by hand and projected onto a screen alongside a live musical performance.

•        This made song-book publishers Edward B. Marks and Joe Stern’s number, ‘The Little Lost Child’, a massive hit in 1894. 

Early music videos
                            Early music videos were named promotional films, for example, films of gigs.

        In the 1960’s, The Beatles used film to market their records and express themselves as artists. They starred in full length features such as ‘A Hard’s Day’s Night’.

       This particular video had a narrative, but some of the promotional clips which they recorded were composed of many psychedelic images.

        Many rock and roll bands of the late 1960s and 1970s followed their lead, where they released more sophisticated promotional films that shared the line-up with live performances on televised music variety shows. 

TV and music videos

       A significant event for music videos was the first British chart music television programme, BBC’s Top of the Pops which started on the 1^st January 1964.

        They began to show music videos in the late 1970s. However, they had a limit on how many they could show in favour of having the band in the studio.

•        It broadcasted weekly up until the 30^th July 2006.

•        Each weekly programme consisted of performances from some of that week’s best selling popular music artists, with a rundown of that week’s singles chart.

•        There was also a special edition programme on Christmas Day featuring some of the best-selling singles of the year. This special Christmas edition has still continued. 
In the 1990s, the show’s format was sold to several foreign broadcasters in the form of a franchise package.

 Various versions of the show were aired in nearly 100 countries.

Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen (1970s)

      It was only after the success of Bohemian Rhapsody’s promotional video, first released in 1975, that it became routine for record companies to record a music video for an artist’s single release.

     The video was produced so the band could avoid miming on Top of the Pops, as it would have been difficult to mime to such a complex song live.

   It has been said that the video has been ‘hailed’ as launching the age of MTV.

    It was recorded in just four hours to a budget of £4,500.#


Modern music videos (1980s)

     Michael Jackson’s thriller was released in 1983 costing $500,000. It lasted 14 minutes and is regularly referred to as the most influential music video of all time. He was the first artist to create the concept of the short film.
     MTV was launched in 1981. The first video shown on MTV was the Buggles ‘Video killed the Radio Star’.

     This video also allowed more Black American artists to get airtime on MTV.

     In 1985 MTV launched VH1 which featured ‘softer music’.
     Channel 4 also started to broadcast ‘The Chart Show’ in 1986 – this consisted of music videos entirely. 

Madonna - Vogue

This track was released on the 20th March 1990. The music video was unique as it showed Madonna paying homage to a number of golden era Hollywood actresses.
It is shot in black and white, and takes an inspiration from the 1920’s and 30’s.

It has been ranked as one of the greatest videos of all times in different polls, it has also won three different awards at the 1990 MTV Video music Awards.

The video used artwork by the art deco artist Tamara De Lempicka and an art deco set design as the theme was the 1920’s and 30’s.

Some of the close up shots used in the video recreate portraits of well known stars such as Marilyn Monroe, Greta Garbo, Katherine Hepburn and Jean Harlow.

In this video Madonna is seen wearing the famous ‘cone bra’. 

Lady Gaga - Bad Romance

      During the mid 2000’s YouTube was a major development, it affected the way a music video was marketed, as it can now be marketed virally.

     In 2010 Lady Gaga’s ‘Bad Romance’ became the most viewed video on YouTube for that year.

   Lady Gaga’s videos are significant as she introduced some unusual concepts which haven’t ever been done before. The idea of Bad Romance is that Gaga has been kidnapped by a group of models who then sell her off to the Russian mafia.

      In this video the ideas are particularly unusual and unique. For example, in one scene a bed with a male character on bursts into flames suddenly and Gaga sings quite sinisterly in front of the flames. Another example is towards the beginning of the video when she and other female dancers crawl out of pods which look similar to coffins.