Influential Music videos

Introduction

 

Music videos over the years have become more and more influential and some videos are the start of something new in the music video industry. For example new ideas in music videos can encourage others to do something similar if successful. Below are some influential music videos from the last 40 years.



1960

Bob Dylan's song "Subterranean Homesick Blues" in 1965 was probably the first music video that presented inspiration to the world of music videos. This is due to the songs creative technique in delivering a simple music video. The video consists of a person holding up cards with the lyrics of the song on them and gradually swapping through the cards to match with the non diegetic sound of the song. This happens throughout the whole video with the addition of a random background character. This video has a very simple idea behind it but gets peoples attention due to its unique presentation. Below is the music video itself.
 

1970

Next is Queen,s "Bohemian Rhapsody" in 1976. Some critics have gone as far to say that this song is one of the best videos ever. Queen in this video use the different conventions of the music video very well. This includes features like lighting, smoke, mirrors and more. The most important thing that represents this video would be its visual presentation. There are many different techniques used to help this video become a success. You could say that this video has many different genres as there are so many different aspects of this video. For example there are parts of the song which are slow paced and then the song suddenly goes into being fast paced. The music video is below.

1980

In 1983 one of the most influential music videos and probably one of the best music videos was created. This was Michael Jackson's "Thriller". This was down to many different things. The main thing though was probably because it was almost like a short thriller film. This is because the video is 14 minutes long and contains a lot of diegetic sound with no singing to build up the main song itself. Again this is a video that is very different as the main theme is horror and this is why you have zombies dancing instead of normal people. The video is shown below.

1990

In the 1990's the most influential music video was Nirvana's "Smells like teen spirit". This is due to the videos great choreography. One of the things which the video uses the best would be its use of smoke as it is involved within most of the video really making an impact to the style of music. The song itself is rock so Nirvana does the song justice by adding lots of fast paced editing when the fast paced music kicks in. Nirvana also uses the crowd well in the video as they join in with the band by dancing, singing and jumping about. This makes the audience watching on the TV, computer and more feel like they are actually there having fun with the band. The true fans of the band will enjoy this feature especially if they have not seen the band live and want the opportunity to do that without spending money. Lighting is another cool feature used as the setting itself is pretty dark apart from the single use lights shinning on the band themselves this therefore represents the importance of the band. The video is shown below.

2000

In 2000 came a music video and song by itself that was very popular throughout the general public and this was Nickelback's "Rockstar" in 2005. This music video was popular sue to it being so unique. For example nobody really does videos that often where the lyrics of the song are sung by so many people after each person saying a line or two. This sort of song really wants to make you join along and sing as the song feels closer to you if so many people are singing lines from the song. To start with the song was only released in America and Canda but then was released worldwide. Rockstar currently has a 3 million dollor income over the song in the US alone. The music video is shown below.