GERTRUDA DAMBRAUSKAITE
A2 Media Portfolio
A Brief History of Music Videos
A music video or song video is a short film integrating a song and imagery, produced for promotional or artistic purposes.
Although artists claimed to have the first music video during the 1950's and 1960's, the first music video was Bessie Smith's St. Louis Blue's released in 1929.
Since the technologies that we have today did not exist in the 1920's, music videos were shown in theatres until 1932.
In 1970's 'Top of the Pops' was introduced which had a huge impact on the way music was consumed in the UK. Furthermore, in 1981 MTV launched which changed the way people would view music videos. Perhaps the biggest contributor to the popularity of music videos was Micheal Jackson, more specifically 'Thriller' which was released in 1982 and was broadcast on TV as a big event. The music video was made into a short film which is 13 minutes long and was directed by John Landis.
Controversy:
The 1980's was also the time when music videos were becoming more controversial. The first music video to ever be banned on MTV was Queen's 'Body Language', released in 1982, due to its homoerotic undertones and was deemed unsuitable for a television audience at that time. Furthermore, 'Girls on Film' by Duran Duran was also banned from BBC as the video featured topless women mud wrestling, however, MTV did air the music video but it the heavily edited form. In 1991, Micheal Jackson's 'Black or White' was banned as in showed Jackson 'inappropriately' touching himself in the dance sequence and it was Jackson's most controversial music video.
In the 2000's Robbie Williams' 'Rock DJ' was censored during the daytime due to the controversial content of the music video of him ripping off his skin, muscles and organs until he was left with a bloody skeleton. In fact, the music video was banned in Dominican Republic due to allegation of satanism. More recently Rihanna's video "S&M", which features the singer whipping a tied-up man and indulging in a lesbian kiss, was banned in 11 countries and was flagged as inappropriate for viewers that are under 18 on YouTube. Furthermore, in 2014, Katy Perry's video for "Dark Horse" was seen as offensive to Muslims as Perry's character turned a man wearing a pendant that says ''Allah'', the Arabic word for God, into sand, with the necklace burned by lightning shot from Perry's fingers. People accused Perry of "representing an opposition of God" and demanded that the video should be taken down from YouTube.