A Brief History of Music Video
Visual material has always been important to music with a close relationship between the two as far back as the 1920s, with Oskar Fischinger experimenting with sound and visual synchronisation in some of his experimental films such as his early Komposition in Blau 1935.
Ever since then there has always been a link between the music and some sort of visual representation from 'soundies' (short films) through the 40s, followed by the rock'n'roll movies of the 50s and the 'Scopitone' in France in the 60s. The Scopitone by far being the most similar ancestor of music video with unnatural colour, fantasy sets and highly suggestive sexual dances, even showing close ups of female crotches. Which directly relates to the extravagance and voyeuristic nature of contemporary music videos today.
The first official 'music video' to be made was arguably Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen in 1975 which brought forward this idea of music television. Further prompted by the use of music on many popular TV shows such as The Monkees showing many of the forms and conventions of music video today (comedy, action, surrealism mixed with performance), promoclips being made to advertise TV shows and the rapid growth of cable TV. Lead to MTV finally beginning to broadcast in 1981, however there was insufficient material to actually fill the channel but New Wave British Pop quickly took advantage of this and used the channel to break into the American market. Noticing the potential of the medium American artist followed the British artists lead and began releasing their own promos. Followed by black artists led by the director Hype Williams, who by the late 1990s were releasing high budget videos which in turn generated huge record sales. Which shows how important the invention of music video is as it effectively revived the music industry promoting record sales and establishing image as the key promotion of stars, e.g. Madonna who was propelled to super-stardom by bypassing live performance and making herself known through high profile, provocative music videos.
By the end of the 1980s music video was seen as something that is pre-requisite in an artists success and the promotion of music in general. And has remained as important up to now, with MTV being a major brand which is available in all corners of the globe, its own award ceremony 'video music awards', and now potential film directors using music video as a starting point for making feature films .
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