HISTORY OF MUSIC VIDEOS

The earliest piece of media which would be called a music video is '

St Louis Blues' Bessie Smith 1929. The blues singer Bessie was in a 2 reel film which was very short called 'Saint Louis Blues' which came out I 1929. This has a dramatized performance of the song.

Another early piece of work that could be cast as a music video is Walt Disney's animated products that were built around music. Typically classical music like Fantasia and Silly Symphonies.

In 1956 Tony Bennett was filmed walking in Hyde Park, London as his recording of 'Stranger in Paradise' played.  This film was distributed in the US and UK on TV leading Bennett to claim he made the first music video.

In the 1960s a visual Jukebox was invented in France and short films were produced to play  with the songs which again developed music videos further.

Probably the thing that developed music videos the most was The Beatles 'A hard day's night' in 1964. This was a film but had musical segments in it which still today set out the visual vocabulary  of today's music videos. The Monkees also did the same as the Beatles in the US.

The first real and proper music video has to be Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody' it started a new era of using music videos as promos and was seen as ground breaking.

By the 1980s releasing a music video to accompany a new single has become standard and the Jacksons started releasing videos that cost millions to make, the most notable being 'Can You Feel It'.

In 1981 MTV was launched and the first music video to be aired was 'Video killed the Radio Star' by Buggles. It marked the first 24 hour music video.

Music Videos also started to become more slick ands editing improved plus narratives started to form in the music videos. Michael Jackson was the first person to have a short film as their music video which included a start, middle and end.

He did this with 'Billie Jean' and continued to do this with the rest of his videos. His biggest music vidoe hit and the most expensive music video of that time was Thriller coming to an overall cost of $500,000.

Up until 2005 music videos were only really shows on Music Channels and TOTP's. In 2005 Youtube was launched which made the viewing of music videos a lot easier. In more recent years Taylor Swift has started creating music videos that have been of really high quality but has cost a vast amount of money. Awards for high quality and artistic music videos are now part of most music awards and the aim for artists to have the best music video is very high.  In more recent years it has become more and more promenant that the 'sex appeal' of females and sometimes men is very noticeable in music videos now compared to older music videos.