2. What is a Music Video?
A music video is a short film or video that accompanies a complete
piece of a song. Music videos are mainly made and used as a
marketing technique to promote the music/artist. Music video origin
back decades, but they came into recognition in the 1980s, when
MTV based their format around. Many artist invested money and
time to develop music videos to bring out the important messages
of their music and to all a large range of people view it on such TV
channels as MTV.
3. The earliest music videos were filmed in the mid 1950’s .
However, before then, as early as the 1920’s films by animators
such as Oskar Fischinger were accompanied by musical sores
labelled ‘visual music’
Early animated effects of Walt Disney, his silly
symphonies, were built around music. The warner brothers
cartoons even today billed as Looney tunes and merrier
melodies were initially fashioned around specific songs
featuring such popular performers.
4. 1950’s and 60’s
In 1956 Tony Bennett was filmed walking along the Serpentine in
Hyde park, London as his recording of ‘stranger in paradise’ played
this film was distributed to and played by UK and US television
stations leading to Bennett later claim he made the first music
video.
5. Modern Era of Music video 1970’s
In the UK the importance of top of the pops to promote a single
created an environment of innovation and competition amongst
bands and record labels as the show’s producers placed strict limits
on number of videos it would use. Therefore a good video would
increase a song’s sales as viewers hoped to see the video again the
following weeks.
Also, the program allowed singers and bands to perform their music
live to further promote themselves.
6. Queen
The British rock band Queen created the song ‘Bohemian
Rhapsody’. It was written by Freddie Mercury for the band’s 1975
album a night at the opera. Song has no chorus, instead consisting
of three main parts: ballad segment ending with a guitar
solo, operatic passage, and hard rock section. At the time it was the
most expensive single ever made and remains one of the elaborate
recordings in popular music history.
7. The launch of MTV in 1981 allowed the public to watch and also
vote for their favourite music videos. The fist video to be aired is
The Buggles ‘video killed the radio star’.
In the mid 1980’s artists started to use more effect in their videos
and added a storyline to their music videos.
Michael Jackson was the first artist to create the concept of the
short story.
8. Michael Jackson
Thriller is the sixth studio album by Michael Jackson. It was
released on November 30, 1982, by Epic Records as the follow-
up to Jackson's 1979 album Off the Wall. Thriller explores similar
genres to those of Off the Wall, including pop, R&B and rock
Of the nine tracks on the album, four of them were written by
Jackson himself. Seven singles were released from the album, all
of which reached the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. In just
over a year, Thriller became—and currently remains—the best-
selling album of all time, with sales estimated by various sources
as being between 65 and 110 million copies worldwide.
The album won a record-breaking eight Grammy Awards at the
1984 Grammys.
9. Thriller enabled Jackson to break down racial barriers via his
appearances on MTV and meeting with President of the United
States Ronald Reagan at the White House. The album was one of
the first to use music videos as successful promotional tools—the
videos for "Thriller", "Billie Jean" and "Beat It" all received
regular rotation on MTV. In 2001, a special edition issue of the
album was released, which contains additional audio
interviews, a demo recording and the song "Someone In the
Dark", which was a Grammy-winning track from the E.T. the
Extra-Terrestrial storybook. In 2008, the album was reissued
again as Thriller 25, containing re-mixes that feature
contemporary artists, a previously unreleased song and a DVD.
