History of Music Videos

The first video was in 1981 when 'Video killed the radio star' by Buggles was aired onto MTV- this allowed videos to become big. This video was only made to create a visual to the songs, however this soon changed over time.

There was a second British invasion of American charts in the mid-1980's all due to music videos. Bands like Duran Duran with their video for 'Rio' and Wham! with 'Club Tropicana' showed the more exotic locations, sho

wing how much money they have and give off a representation of the kind of luxurious life they lead.

Teen audiences became attracted to the videos from 'Stock Aitken Waterman' where the heartthrob boys were portrayed as the boy every teenage girl loves and the girl who all the teenage boys fancy. This took of with artists being brought together like Kylie Monogue and Jason Donovan. These type of video's always use a narrative, usually involving a girl and boy in love. These proved very popular for teenagers who could relate to these artists.

Older audience's on the other hand, were more attracted to the more simple, quite dark videos that don't use much technology or narrative. These usually consist of just miming to the camera or concert footage. An example of the simple miming video is Cher:

In the 1990's music videos influenced adverts, TV, film and popular culture. Whitney Houston is a prime example as she starred in the film 'The Bodyguard' she then released a song that was related to this, using clips of the film in her music video to promote it even more.

Nowadays, music videos are shown on digital tv channels 24/7, with a range of niche channels for different genres. There is Kerrang for the rock videos, Q for the indie, Smash Hits! for pop, Kiss for R&B and much more to cater for even more genres.