Music Video Research

There are many kinds and styles of music videos.

Narrative music videos are videos that tell stories or go with the song lyrics such as Payphone by Maroon 5 which is about 2 people escaping a robbery and then the guy splitting from the woman and he ends up using a payphone to call her.

Performance music videos are videos that are just of the band actually playing and singing the song like Teenage Dirtbag by Wheatus which has a bit of a narrative video but also uses footage of the band.

Concept music videos are videos about a specific theme such as Somebody That I Used to Know by Gotye which is about abstract art, where the singers are slowly covered by shapes and paint.

there are animated music videos where the video is all or partially animated such as Take on Me by A-Ha which uses pencil drawn animation.

Interpretive music videos are videos that can have multiple ways of being interpreted by different people like Pumped Up Kicks by Foster the People which is about a school shooter but a lot of people don’t know that and think it is about something else (I do not know what they think it is about?)

Impressionist music videos are videos that use strange shots in order to show a specific theme, Take on Me could also be impressionist because it is trying to convey that school shootings are a bad thing (Obviously)

Intertextuality in music videos is where the video uses references from other things such as history, media or myths like Die Another Day by Madonna which was made for a James Bond movie so it uses a sword fight and a torture scene similar to Bond.

Surrealist music videos are similar to impressionist music videos except the video usually has nothing in common with the music while still being strange such as Light It Up by Major Lazer which has random dancers seemingly made out of strange things like carpet and sticky notes dancing to the song.

Allusions in music videos are like Intertextuality except the song is usually entirely about the thing the song is referencing such as We Didn’t Start the Fire by Billy Joel which is about a marriage during different times.

A music video can be used for many reasons such as being a promotion for something or perhaps to just promote the song in general, it of course also works as an extension of income because the more work you do the more you get paid.

You can also extend that to things like letting the songs play on a music TV channel or DVD or CD or website or download or all of them. They could also have the song appear on a movie or TV show or something as a part of the plot or make a Synergy song where the song was made for that film. You can also either produce your music videos independently or get a music label to help which gives you a big brand name.

Music videos were originally used to advertise as a marketing device to promote music record companies, they are called promos. Disney made Fantasia which is an animated film based on a classical music track and they are now a common thing.

Music videos can help people remember the song or make the song feel better with visuals to look at or maybe help people understand better what the song is about or for just entertainment or showing off their talents.

There are 3 different types of styles that base themselves on other things including other music videos.

A homage is a tribute to the original thing meant in a loving way while a parody is made to mock and made fun of the original (usually not in a mean way) and finally a pastiche is a copy that is supposed to be as close as possible to the original, kind of like a remake. 1 example is Fat by Weird Al Yankovic which is a parody of Bad by Michael Jackson.