Music Video: A Brief History

Music Video: A Brief History

The first example of a music video came from a short two reel film made in 1929. The film featured a dramatised perform of a song named after the film “Saint Louis Blues” performed by Bessie Smith. This then started off the evolution of Music videos.

In the 1930’s experimentation of music videos began including methods such as Len lye, this involved a series of bright coloured patterns and shapes appearing onscreen whilst the music played in the background.


Shortly after in 1940, Walt Disney created Fantasia, an animation film based around pieces of classical music. Disney’s silly symphonies were also created and built up around music as were Warner Bros Merrie Melodies built based on song from upcoming films.

Live action musical shorts starring popular performer were also introduced and distributed to theatres. This was followed by The Panoram jukebox, often found in taverns, which consisted of 8 three minute soundies.

Music videos began to develop into the 50’s and 60’s when artists were filmed whilst their songs played in the background for example Tony Bennett was filmed walking The Serpentine whilst his record “Stranger in Paradise” played. This song was then claimed to be the first music video as it was one of the first to be distributed to and played by UK and US television stations. In the 60’s The Scopitone Jukebox was introduced and consisted of video of people unrelated to the songs, dancing and lip-syncing to the music.

One of the biggest developments came from The Beatles and their 1964 motion picture “A Hard Day’s Night” which include a song of the same name where The Beatles were acting whilst their song played in the background. The musical segments in this film are arguably said to have set out the basic visual vocabulary of today’s music videos.
Narrative videos began to make an appearance in the music industries in the 60’s with the kinks being one of the first to have a narrative music video.

In 1967 The Beatles took the genre to new heights with their ground-breaking films/ music videos for "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane” which used techniques borrowed from underground and avant garde film, such as reversed film effects, dramatic lighting, unusual camera angles and rhythmic editing. Some of the biggest developments for music videos of the modern era was the video recording and editing processes as well as the introduction of special effects. Queen’s video for “Bohemian Rhapsody” was deemed as ground- breaking as it was the first music video used to promote the artist/band and was one of the first to be filmed and edited on videotape.

In the 70’s Top of the Pops was created to promote artists and singles. When an act was unable to perform on the show and they had no music video, dance troops were used to dance on the stage while the song played.

By the mid 80’s music videos were common things, with some artists creating high budget videos in order to get the edge over other artists. In 1981 MTV, the first 24 hour music video station, was launched with the first music video aired being Buggles’ “Video killed the radio star”. Music videos then began to use more sophisticated effects with developed storylines and plots. The first to create a proper short film for his music video was Michael Jackson with Thriller in 1983 with the video lasting almost 14 minutes. A few years later in 1986, The Channel 4 Chart Show was created solely for music videos. Also in this year was the development of computer animation in music videos. In the late 80’s more and more directors began to get involved with music videos with budgets for some videos being in the millions such as Duran Duran’s “wild boys” which cost £4 million to make.

In the early 90’s, MTV began listing directors with the artist and song credits. Throughout the nineties MTV launched different channels around the world in order to cater to more local markets as well as to show more alternative and older music videos through channels such as MTV2 launched in 1996. Almost ten years later in 2005, YouTube was launched creating an easier and faster method of viewing music videos. YouTube meant that some artist began to success as a result of people watching their music videos online. The internet has become the primary growth income market for record company produced music videos due to music download sites/apps such as Apples ITunes and Spotify.


Modern day music videos often contain strong and unique narratives that stand out to audiences making them memorable. Music videos are now usually released before the single is actually available to buy/download from systems like ITunes and Spotify, this is in order to build a hype about the artist and their song before it is released. Artists are in competition a lot now a days for the best video and are often judged upon YouTube/Vevo watches as well as public votes in awards ceremonies such as The MTV awards and The BRITS. Modern day music videos often have quite large budgets and can be filmed in multiple location across the world. Such as Taylor Swifts Wildest Dreams Music Video which was filmed both in California and Africa.