Purposes of Music Videos.

Pop Promos (or music videos, as commonly known) are visual representations of a piece of music. Each video follows a certain style; either a narrative, performance, concept, or a combination of two/all three of them, as well as being relevant to the target audience of the artist as to who's video it is. For instance if they were someone who fit into the genre of Rap/Hip-Hop, conventionally the video would consist of dancing women, clubs/bars, designer clothes and jewelery. This theme usually relates to the lyrics of the song, and quite possibly even the listeners. Whereas in a rock video, you would expect to see lots of shots of the band performing (as most rock acts play their own instruments) with a narrative story sequence behind it, which can either correspond with the lyrics, or not.

Music videos were first introduced in the mid 1960s, with bands such as The Beatles & The Rolling Stones creating short films promoting their records. This enabled people to hear their music, and in a sense see the band all around the world without them physically having to be there playing live, which further increased the appeal/demand for them. At first these short films were produced in black in white, but then in 1965, The Beatles second short film feature for "Help!" was produced in colour, and was a great success.



In the 1970s, more bands began to join in with this new method of 'pop promos', and in Britain, Top Of The Pops began to feature them in each weekly programme. However, the BBC placed strict limits as to how many could be shown, which encouraged artists to produce ones at a high standard so that the song's sales would increase due to viewers wanting to see it again the following week. Queen ordered for a video for their track 'Bohemian Rhapsody' to be made for it to be aired on Top Of The Pops, and today the video is notable for being recorded and edited purely on video tape. Furthermore, thanks to the eye-catching 'Ashes to Ashes' promo made by David Mallet, David Bowie reached his first number 1 single in the UK charts in almost a decade.



The 80s saw the beginning of music videos becoming mainstream. When MTV launched in 1981 airing them 24-hours a day, there was a real demand for them to be produced to ensure that artist's music was heard globally. Adam and the Ants and Madonna partially owe their success to the seductive appeal of thier music videos. Initially however, it was mainly British acts that were creating the videos for broadcast, which caused a 'Brit Invasion' into the US charts during this period.



The biggest success story regarding music videos appears to be Michael Jackson's "Thriller". Frequently dubbed as the greatest music video ever made, the 1983 14-minute long video directed by John Landis with a $500,000 budget, turned over a $1,050,000 profit from selling rights alone. The video also boosted sales of the "Thriller" album itself, resulting in 110 million copies being sold world-wide.



Ultimately, a video is made to promote a band's single, in hope of increasing sales of that particular record and/or the artist's album. Most artists will release 3/4 videos of tracks from the same album, which helps to keep them in the public eye, or alternatively, introduces themselves to new listeners. If successful, they can be played for months or even years after the release of the relevant album, especially thanks to modern technology whereby people can download them to devices such as iPods and mobile phones; keep watching them on the Internet (i.e YouTube) or just simply on television music channels such as MTV, VH1 and Kerrang!

When a song is added to a film's soundtrack, usually the video then includes clips from the film alongside the narrative. This usually ends up with the song being attached to the film, or the film being attached to the song. Examples of this include:

'My Heart Will Go On' by Celine Dion (Titanic)

'Decode' by Paramore (Twilight)

'(Everything I Do) I Do It For You' by Bryan Adams (Robin Hood; Prince of Thieves)

'New Perspective' by Panic! At The Disco (Jennifer's Body)



'(Everything I Do) I Do It For You' by Bryan Adams in particular was extremely successful, and spent 16 weeks at Number 1 in the UK charts. The film it was attached to also recieved commercial success as a box office hit, earning $18.3 million in it's opening weekend alone.

Originally, producers tended to make music videos more performance based that fans could see the bands playing their instruments and singing on screen, instead of them having to continually tour around the globe. However, this begun to change in the late 1970's and early 80's as artist such as Madonna became popular; giving music videos a more seductive tone and thus, causing an artists' success being based more on sex appeal than performance. Then in the 90s, promos started to have a stronger narrative depicted within them, as producers experimented with storylines relating to the song lyrics. Directors also started appearing on the credits on MTV; suggesting that music videos were now seen as more of an art form rathan than just simply being a pop promo.

(All YouTube videos embedded 08/06/11)