Music Video History

Music videos were begun to be made in the 1920s. The most iconic music video of the 1920s which started the revolution of moving image with the audio was Bessie Smith, a jazz artist. 

Bessie's music video was known as a 'short film clip', it was called St Louis Blues and was realised in 1929. The short film clip shows Bessie singing by a bar and other people in the room singing along with their whilst sat on tables. The video is very basic but I feel like it is still influential with the idea of the music video not having just the artist in it. 

In 1965 a very iconic music video was made by Bob Dylan for his song 'Subterranean Homesick Blues'. The video contains a man holding up signs with lyrics on in time with the audio. The lyrics on screen and the audio are not in sync very accurately but this idea has still been used in future music videos. It could be argued that Bob Dylan's music videos are where the idea of lyric music videos came from today. However lyric videos of today are usually animated instead of written onto a piece of card.



in 1975, Queen released a music video for their song Bohemian Rhapsody. This had rose a lot of attention and was seen as an incredible video in the 70s, this video was the first video ever to use advanced visual effects. The video contains an iconic 'honeycomb effect' on the 4 members of the band which had never been seen before on television music shows such as Top Of The Pops. Effects are used for the first 4 minutes of the video and then it cuts to a live video of them performing when the music becomes more hard rock.




It could be argued that these three iconic music videos could be where most influences of music videos come from today. Bessie's music video was a basic video of watching the artist performing their song, allowing the record label show off the artist's image. Bob Dylan's music video could be argued that it created the idea of lyric videos, there has also been parodies posted on the internet of the video which proves it caught a lot of media attention. Queen's music video was the first video using advanced visual effects which a lot of music videos use today. The video also shows the band performing live which also another type of music video bands do today so show off the different member's talents and their image on stage as a whole.