History Of Music Video's

History of Music Video’s

The first ever music video filmed is considered to be ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ by Queen which was released in 1974. However, a lot happened before this date in the music industry to lead up to this.

The first real step to music videos was in 1894 when performers, to promote sales of the song, would project still images onto a screen during live performances. This became known as ‘The Illustrated Song’. Then in the early 1930’s ‘Screen Song’s’ were introduced, which was an animation with lyrics so audiences could sing-a-long. Also, during this period and up until the 60’s Musicals were still very popular such as ‘Diamonds Are A Girls Best Friend’ featuring Marylyn Monroe.

During this time, music was genuinely hard to get a hold of. Only two channels were broadcast on television and both stopped at certain times. This is why things such ‘Pirate Music Radio Stations’ were introduced. However, anything rebellious was warned away and these radio stations didn’t last long. This time period was also the time of Elvis, but because early Rock and Roll was seen as a threat he was refused to be allowed to travel and tour. Resulting in the making of short films which had the same structure as musicals.

In 1964 The Beatles starred in their first feature film called ‘A Hard Day’s Night’. It was shot in black and white and featured film segments of the band acting as well as a performance from them too. The whole purpose of the short film was to create an image for the band.

 In 1967 The Beatles then released 'I Am The Walrus' it was the first music video of theirs to interpret their song lyrics visually, since then video's up until this day have used this feature.

 Following from this, in 1972, David Bowie released 'Space Oddity' a music video using specific conventions of 'space', it includes 'futuristic' things and due to the images being constantly focused then unfocused and the setting being very dark, it's supposed to come across as surreal.

When Bohemian Rhapsody was released in 1974 it stayed at number one for 9 weeks. This was mainly due to the fact that shortly before it was realised it was the beginning of music television, specifically Top of the Pops. This resulted in Bohemian Rhapsody being at number one for so long because of the fact that it was considered the first ever real music video, meaning that every time the song was requested it was to see the video.

 In the mid 80's the video for 'Sledgehammer' by Peter Gabriel was released, it was one of the first and biggest animation music video's made at that particular time. It was created by Peter Gabriel laying under a sheet of glass for 16 hours as it was filmed one frame at a time, it is then said that it took just under two months to finalize the video with all of the animations.

It was after this time (the 90's) when the majority of music video's had some sort or more narrative in them, it was also when music video's started to become more abstract. An example of this type of music video is 'Losing My Religion' by REM, it included a narrative, performance as well as aspects of parts of the video being abstract.

 Consequently, because more music video's started to have more narrative, it meant that the narrative of the video's also started to be more truthful about the artist, an example of this is 'Outside' by George Michael, due to what had happened in his personal life he used this certain song and made a video directing his views and opinions on this certain incident.

Since the progressions of music videos, Thriller by Michael Jackson has been for a long time and is still considered the greatest music video of all time. It was released in 1984 and lasts for a full 14 minutes. It has used the conventions of older music videos, featuring a short film too, however Thriller differs from all of these, particularly because Michael Jackson's talent for dancing. He was also very much involved with the making of the video deciding on all of the most important decisions such as locations and outfits. This is the norm for most musical video's these days, artists tend to want them to be more personal.