History of the Music Video

Music videos go back a long way, as far as the 1940's with musician Louis Jordan making short films for his songs, and some forms of videos and images to be played alongside songs going back even further, as far as the late 19th century. Music historian Donald Clarke says that Louis Jordan's videos were the ancestors of the modern music video. The idea for music videos stemmed from musicals from the 1930's - 50's, and some music videos reference this, such as Madonna's video for 'Material Girl', which resembles the scene for 'Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend' in the 1953 musical 'Gentlemen Prefer Blondes'. Musicals inspired music videos in ways such as showing the band or singer performing, but also importantly by including things such as dance sequences in sync with the music. This influence is very clear in contemporary music videos.

In 1957 Tony Bennet was filmed walking through Hyde Park in London whilst his song 'Stranger in Paradise' played. The film was then aired on US and UK television stations, and then in 1959 D.J. JP Richardson coined the phrase 'Music Video'. In 1961 Manny Pittson recording music, then filmed different scenes with artists lip-synching and edited the two together, for the Canadian television show Singalong Jubilee.

In 1965 the Beatles started making promotional videos for their songs so that they could be distributed and promoted without them having to make actual appearances. Their video for 'Help!' had many features used in virtually all modern performance based videos, such as playing with focus and camera angles and cutting to the beat.

Over time these techniques have been developed and invested in to produce the music video as we know it today. They have gone from simply recordings of the artists on stage to videos such as Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson's 'Scream' which cost $7,000,000. Often music video's attract very high profile names to produce and direct them, such as Martin Scorsese directing Michael Jackson's 'Bad'. Virtually every major song release these days has a video release as well, and is primarily used as a promotional marketing tool to increase sales, however often they can be heavily influenced by arts and have become an art in their own right.