Industrial
Context: Brief History of Music Videos
July 24th,
1963- First Appearance of
Music Videos: One of the earliest
videos was Jan & Dean’s “Surf City” – this music video hit the Top 40
June 28th,
1964- The Beatles first music
video: The Beatles starred
in their first feature film A Hard Day’s Night, directed by Richard Lester,
which was shot in black and white
June 28th,
1966- Bob Dylan’s first music
video: Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean
Homesick Blues” was filmed by D.A. Pennebaker. It was featured in Pennebaker’s
Dylan film documentary Don’t Look Back
June 28th,
1974- Sparks’ music video: In 1974 the band
Sparks filmed a promo video for their single “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for
Both of Us” from the album Kimono My House
June 28th,
1975- TOTP: The long-running British
TV show Top of The Pops began playing music videos in the late 1970s. Therefore
a good video would increase a song’s sales as viewers hoped to see it again the
following week
August 16th,
1975- Queen on TOTP: The band Queen
ordered Bruce Gowers to make a promo video for their new single “Bohemian
Rhapsody” to show it in Top of The Pops; this is also notable for being
entirely shot and edited on videotape
1980- Ashes to Ashes (David
Bowie): The most expensive music
video until then, and also one of the most iconic. This music video was a
stepping stone to deeper layers of meaning in music videos
June 28th, 1981- MTV: The U.S. video channel MTV launched, airing “Video Killed the Radio Star” and beginning an era of 24-hour-a-day music on television
June 28th,
1983- Michael Jackson’s
influential music video: The most successful,
influential and iconic music video of all time was released – the nearly 14-minute-long
video for Michael Jackson’s song “Thriller”. The video set new standards for production,
having cost US$500,000 to film
July 30th,
1985- Mainstream music videos:
Music videos grew to
play a central role in popular music marketing. Many important acts of this
period, most notably Adam and the Ants, Duran Duran and Madonna, owed a great
deal of their success to their skilful construction and seductive appeal of
their videos
December 11th, 1992- Directors credited in music videos: MTV began listing directors with the artist and song credits, reflecting the fact that music videos had increasingly become an auteur’s medium. Directors i.e. Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, and Hype Williams all brought a unique vision and style to the videos they directed
June 28th, 1995- Most expensive music videos: Two of the videos directed by Romanek are notable for being two of the three most expensive music videos of all time; Michael and Janet Jackson’s “Scream” which cost $7million to produce and Madonna’s “Bedtime Story” which cost $5million
March 16th,
2005- Fall of MTV music videos:
MTV and many of its
sister channels had largely abandoned showing music videos in favour of reality
television shows, which were more popular with its audiences
September 2nd,
2005- Rise of the Internet:
The launch of the
website YouTube made the viewing of online video much faster and easier, just
like Google Videos, Yahoo! Video, Facebook, etc. which uses similar technology.
Some artists began to see success as a result of videos seen mostly or entirely
online, i.e. the band OK Go
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