The history of the music promo

The history of the music promo

 

The Beatles – A Hard Day’s Night

The film A Hard Day’s Night was the first of its kind and although it was a feature length film it started a trend and some of the features of the video are still common conventions of music videos today. For example there were huge amount of shots of the band playing and also plenty of fast cuts and close ups and these are conventions that are still around today. There was also a big Beatles logo in the background and this creates a brand image something that is still important in music promos today.

 

 

Bob Dylan – Subterranean Homesick Blues

 

This was one of the first music videos and was unconventional at the time as it consisted of just one shot of Bob Dylan and some flash cards. This type of music video has been copied and adapted several times and is still considered unconventional.

 

 

Top of the Pops

Top of the pops was a long running weekly music programme that showcased the most popular music of each week and this created the need for an artist to create a brand image as they would be on TV. It also created the need for music promos as if a band couldn’t be there to ‘perform’ then a promo would be shown instead and this meant bands had to create promos in order to get publicity.

 

The Beatle – Strawberry Fields Forever

This is a music video that broke the conventions at time and created some new conventions that are often repeated today. There was a lot of use of editing such as transitions and effects and this was something that hadn’t been done before. There were also slow motion shots which again were a new thing at the time. It was also the first purpose made concept video.

 

 

The Monkees – A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You

The Monkees were a constructed pop band that were made to be the American answer to the Beatles and this could be seen clearly in this surreal promo. There was also a lot of attempted comedy and slapstick in this video and this could portray the band as not taking themselves to seriously.

 

Queen – Bohemian Rhapsody

 

Seen by many people as the first music video, Bohemian Rhapsody was an epic six minute video full of crazy effects and performance from the band. Most of the shots were close ups of the lead singer, Freddy Mercury. The editing and visual effects have made this video one of the most famous of all time.

 

David Bowie – Ashes to Ashes

This video is similar to both Bohemian Rhapsody and Strawberry Fields Forever as it is heavily edited and has a huge amount of effects placed on the video. The video itself is perhaps an early example of disjuncture as there are a lot of things going on in the video and not a lot of is relevant to the lyrics.

 

Devo – Whip It

The video to Whip It is a fine example of intertextuality as it references other things but also the video represents women as sexual objects and although in this video it is tongue in cheek this is now a convention that is common occurrence in music videos today.

 

MTV

MTV was the first TV channel that specialised in only music. The channel itself showed music videos 24 hours a day and soon set a trend as there are now over 40 music channels on the telly. It was really cheap to broadcast and was immensely popular until the dawn of internet video sites recently. Somewhat ironically the first song broadcast on the new music channel was The Buggles hit Video Killed the Radio Star.

 

 

 

Duran Duran – Rio

 

The video for Rio was one of the first big budget videos and it cost over a million quid. The opening to the video is similar to the opening of a bond film. The video was probably the first by a British band to be filmed in an exotic location and this is also now a convention of big budget videos. There is a lot of high key lighting in the promo and also a sexual representation of women.

 

Michael Jackson – Thriller

Thriller is one the most famous music videos of all time and this is because it is totally unconventional. In the video there is more talking than music. The video itself has a story line that is not too dissimilar to a film. The dance troupe and the special effects were also unconventional at the time but are now commonplace in most music promos.

 

Aerosmith and Run DMC – Walk This Way

Since the birth of MTV five years prior to this song the popular music channel only really showed videos by white rock and pop acts such as Duran Duran. This song and video brought rap music into the mainstream and black music was shown on MTV for the first time. The video itself is nothing special and is just performance but it highlighted the crossover between two very different genres of music.