History of Music Videos

One of the earliest music videos was Bessie Smith's "St Louis Blues". This particular video was made in 1925 and was showcased in theatres up until 1932. As this was a new, interesting type of media, it was popularised through the use of theatres. As this was a new way for an audience to immerse themselves in this type of entertainment, other began to not only notice, but attempt to create similar products.

In 1940, Disney released a film called 'Fantasia', a video based around different pieces of classical music put to animated sketch. Possibly the most famous of these would be 'The Sorcerers Apprentice'.

Music videos began to increase in popularity and number in the 50s/60s as bands such as 'The Beatles' began to put a selection of their own film together with the music. For example, they made a video to go with 'Strawberry Fields Forever' with some interesting clips of the band together walking through fields as well as having some colorful aspect included, presumably made in post-production.

Eventually, as time went on, artists and bands began to experiment with these music video, pushing the boundaries of what would have stereotypically been seen in music video. For example, in Queen's video for 'I Want To Break Free', the all-male band are seen to be dressed up in women's clothing so as to assimilate the look of specific female 'Coronation Street' characters.



Music videos began to become somewhat of a controversial topic as more and more artist began to experiment with the boundaries of music video, with some of them putting scenes so inappropriate for viewing that they had to be removed and re-filmed. One example could be Frankie Goes To Hollywood's original music video for 'Relax' which had inappropriate content in it.

Now in modern times, artists have begun to take advantage of the freedom given to them with their music videos. However often, it will be the record label that has a large amount of control over the music videos  being made this day. Because of this, they have become much more controversial and much more sexual, often relating to the 'Male Gaze Theory' (Laura Mulvey).

An obvious example of this would be Robin Thicke's video for 'Blurred Lines', a video that has been an extremely controversial topic since it was released on March 20th 2013.