The History of Music Videos

In the 1950's, Elvis Presley founded rock and roll music. As this was post world war two, teenagers had only known war through most of their lives, and Elvis founded a teenage culture by appealing to their generation. In many music videos, he played a character, who usually would sing to a girl to win her heart. This fascinated many teenage girls, who then saw him as an idol, and became obsessed with him, much like modern day One Direction fans. Elvis had worldwide popularity, however he never left America. He achieved worldwide popularity by his music videos, as they delivered his performance to the audience for him.

Music videos became immensely popular in the 1960's, when The Beatles first became widespread. Music videos were seen as a way for artists to easily share their music around the world without actually travelling, and The Beatles used this to their advantage, creating many music video short films for their audience world wide. In many of their films they played  a scripted portrayals of themselves instead of actually being themselves, which supports star theory, as they were characters instead of real people. In one of their music videos, titled "I am a Walrus" there are backing vocals which sing "everybody smoke pot" which reflects the culture and beliefs of the 1960's, when weed was legal and was part of everyday life.

In the 1970's, Queen released Bohemian Rhapsody. The song itself was referred to as "too long to be a hit", and so many radio stations refused to play it. As this was the main way audience's listened to music, they found it hard to consume the product. However, when the music video was released, the song became an instant hit, and rose to the number one spot for nine consecutive weeks. Without the video, Bohemian Rhapsody wouldn't be nearly as popular.

In the 1980's, Michael Jackson released cult classic, Thriller.  It was MTV's first world wide premiered music video, and was voted as the most influential music video of all time. This music video was in the style of a 13 minute long short film, and featured a story within a story. In both instances, Michael portrayed a character that wasn't himself, and performed by spoken words instead of singing. The music only starts in the second half of the short film, the first half entirely scripted spoken word performance. The song is now referred to as the most iconic music video of all time, mostly due to the large cultural impact it had at the time.

In the 1990's, television music channels have become less popular. Channels such as MTV had to adapt to this by broadcasting non music related material such as 'Beavis and Butt-head' and 'Daria'. 


During the 2000's, technology developed greatly. The internet
 became the main way in which artists could advertise their music and connect with their fans. When YouTube was launched in 2005, and quickly gained popularity, artists used it more than TV channels to broadcast their music videos, and found it an easier way to become viral. Music videos from decades ago were also uploaded so that users could stream almost any music video. Because of this, television music channels became even less popular, as audiences find it easier to instantly stream the music video they want to watch instead. Channel MTV had expanded to many different channels to accommodate to different genres in music, however the original MTV no longer broadcasts music related content, and instead transmitted  reality show documentaries such as 'My Super Sweet 16', 'Punk'd' and 'MTV Cribs'.