In the late 1950’s a French invention called a Scopitone was introduce. It was in essence a visual jukebox. This was one of the first instances of putting a visual image to a musical track and quickly spread to other countries. One of the first videos of a Top 40 hit was in the summer of 1962 and was made to fit the song “Surf City” by Jan and Dean. The video was in colour and had some basic edits and was very good for its time. It also showed them having fun on a beach which was what people back then did on their holidays meaning people at the time related to it. Although at this point there was no real way for people to consume this meaning it wasn’t a very big hit.
A year later in 1964 The Beatles starred in their first film. A mock documentary by Richard Leister it was called A Hard Day’s Night and showed what it’s like being a Beatle for a few days. The film contained many of their songs which accompanied parts of the film. During these parts you would usually see the Beatles playing their instruments. This gave the audience the impression they were preforming the song rather than just having images to the music. This documentary type film starring bands became popular as it meant the people who couldn’t get to see the bands could go see them in their latest movie. The Beatles second feature film “Help” was shot in 1965 and was in colour, although the video to the song “Help” itself was in black and white.
In 1966 a video was made for Subterranean Homesick Blues by Bob Dylan and was part of D. A. Pennebaker's documentary named Don’t Look Back. It was very simple and consisted of just Bob and white card with the lyrics written on that he moved in time to the song. This was one of the first instances of having a music video that was something other than the artist performing the song or the song fitting to a short story. It was abstract. In 1972 David Bowie had a video made to his song space odyssey. The video was fairly boring and the lighting was far too strong but it was in colour. This was all because music video was still fairly new and they were unsure of how to do it. By the mid 1970’s the quality of music videos had started to improve. Abba’s song “Take a chance on me” had a video made up of the band performing the song so fans could see them, without trying to get to concerts which were over packed at this point as there were no stadiums big enough to house the thousands of fans, which was the original purpose of the music video. Queens song “Bohemian Rhapsody” released in 1975 was similar and had a stage mise-on-scene to enhance the feel you were seeing them live even further, but by the early 1980’s the music video was becoming more and more important as a way of promoting and attracting attention to the song.
1981 saw the launch of MTV. The first song shown was “Video Killed The Radio Star” by “The Buggles” this channel meant people could now easily view music videos and pushed artists to create one. This helped the music video grow even further. “Club Tropicana” by Wham! Showed the two male characters living a life of luxury and seeking two women but it was revealed at the end that all 4 work for the airline. This gave the video a narrative something that would become very big for music videos. In 1985 the Housemartins made a comedy music video to their song happy hour. This showed the 4 guys having fun and messing around in a pub. This was great as people not only related to it but where also amused by it meaning it did its job to capture attention and therefore create attention for the song. The Housemartins broke up and Paul Heaton went on to create “The Beautiful South” whereas the bassist Norman Cook went on to become “Fatboy slim”. The Beautiful South released their song “Song For Whoever” in 1989 the video again had lots of elements of humour showing a blancmange as a star but featured more performance than there previous video to “Happy Hour”.
Towards the early 90’s the music video had become very important and had started to almost separate themselves from the songs themselves people would watch a video to see the video not hear the song. These meant music videos became more and more dramatic expensive and professional.
In 1991 “The Sonic Youth” released “Dirty Boots” the video was a performance video but also had a narrative going on with a boy and girl in the crowd. This meant that the video didn’t just represent the band but also the crowds that came to see them perform. Now music videos where all over as bands and labels had a lots of ways of showing them to their audience. Radiohead’s Video to their song “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” music video that consisted of just the singers head slowly being drown. This kind of strange music video quickly caught on as well becoming what we now refer to as abstract.
Fatboy slim’s song “weapon of choice” featured film star Christopher Walken dancing around his hotel. This was unexpected and abstract as he usually plays villains and serious roles so we never expect to see him dance around like that. So by now music videos where fully developed. Almost every single had one and they nearly always fit into Performance, Abstract or Narrative.
As a fully developed industry it was possible for Blink 182 to create a video to their song “All The Small Things” made entirely of parodies. The fact you can clearly see which videos they are mocking shows these videos and now popular and global.
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