1940's and 50's - Welcome to Top of the Pops! This is when music video's started taking over the television, with the UK glued to Top of the Pops, the US stuck to American Bandstand, and Europe fixated on Beat Club.
This was the era when 'Rock Around The Clock' was massive.
The 1960's was when music video business started to get serious. No longer was it smart suits, no, it was the hippy era, hello long hair! This era was when music video finally started to get choreographed dance moves, lip synching and shots from all angles of the artists. Music producers and record companies also started paying their clients to create a 'short film' to go with their song if they were unable to perform their new single live. Have a look at The Beatles - 'Strawberry Fields Forever'.
Other iconic music videos such as Blondie's 'Eat to the Beat' in 1979, which shows that she doesn't take herself too seriously and Duran Duran's video for Rio (1984) that contains humour as they lead their own 'popstar' lives, mucking around on boats and with women, have shaped music video to the present day, making it acceptable for them to be funny and even silly at times. Artists such as Jon Bon Jovi and Steven Tyler also showed a fluffier side to 80's rock.
However in the 1990's, budgets increased, and so did the size of the music video production, for example Meatloaf's videos 'I Would Do Anything For Love' (1993) was trying to hard to be compared to something of a Hollywood film that the charm that most low budget productions had isn't seen at all in this video.
However, when the mid 90's came around, everything had a massive turn-around, music videos became very abstract and simple. Some videos being filmed and captured in less than 5 hours.
The magazine and music channel 'Smash Hits' came around in the 90's, with all the gossip about what's hot and what's not in the music business. This is what I personally think made artists think that their appearance was just as important as their music.
Nowadays however, directors normally just have their own theme, creating something which is known as an 'Auteers Medium'. Things are much more experimental nowadays, some music videos being very simple, such as Rockstar, by Nickleback, and some being extortionately overpriced.
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