History of Music Videos

 

 

The first form of music videos came to be in the 1930's, when short films/clips were made based on music. Jazz musician Louis Jordan had short films made for his music which were then put together to create a feature film named 'Lookout Feature'. The video to the song 'Bohemian Rhapsody' by Queen was the first proper music video as we know it to be made.

In the 1980's Madonna and Michael Jackson were famed for their use age of music videos as they took inspiration from hit Hollywood films, for example, Madonna's 'Material Girl' which can be linked to 'Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend' from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, staring Marilyn Monroe.

In 2005, YouTube was launched, making music videos extremely internet-friendly. This also allowed for many many artists to become well known through music videos which had been viewed almost entirely online - for example, rapper Soulja Boy found his succes through this way. Many videos are deemed controversial for their content of sex (such as 50 Cents Candy Shop which showed depictions of intercourse), violence (M.I.A.'s 'Born Free' shows the US military killing kids through ways such as blowing them to pieces), and drug use (Soulwax's 'E Talking' cycles through various club-goers taking drugs).