The History Of Music Videos

Music videos have been around for a while now, and here is a look into the history of the most noticeable and ones that have contributed to the way in which they are made and exhibited. 

Music videos have been around since the 1920s, with one of the most noticeable being by the artist named Bettie Smith named St. Louis Blues (1929). Her music video is very simplistic compared to today's standards. It features Smith singing in two different locations, very little movement and action, and it seems as if she could be singing live (or could be due to the sound quality). 

Moving swiftly into the 1960s, Bob Dylan made what is considered as one of the first modern day music videos with the song named ''Subterranean Homesick Blues''. Again, just like Bettie Smiths music video, compared towards today's standards, this video is very basic, but does not feature the artist in the video which was a first for its  time. It was also one of the first videos to incorporate the actual song lyrics into the music video, as a boy has lots of different pieces of paper, featuring certain words from the song. 

Going further into the timeline, now focusing on the 1970s, this was the time where television fully took off, with most of the households having television sets in their home. Record labels noticed this trend and decided to take action and viewed it as an opportunity to get their artist more recognised and earn more money, allowing record labels to create small promos that were aired on television. The sudden boom of the television allowed record labels to promote their artists via music videos, and the artist would not even have to be there to do it themselves, which they would have had to do in the past.

With the increasing popularity in television was not the only thing to come out of the 1970s. In 1975 a band named Queen made a music video for their song ''Bohemian Rhapsody''. This is considered as the first ''proper'' music video, due to the use of the what were considered as advanced video effects and editing at the time, and also frequently called groundbreaking. It is also commonly stated that this video set the language for all other music videos that came out after this. This music video is a very important piece of history due to its impact upon the industry and how videos are made.

Moving onto ''Thriller'' by Michael Jackson, this was also as groundbreaking as ''Bohemiam Rhapsody'' by Queen as this music video had a substantial budget of $1,100,000, which is a very large sum of money to spend on a short music video. It also featured the make-up and costumes that would normally feature in a film, making this a truly amazing music video and revolutionary. 

Not only that, Michael Jackson also has the most expensive music video ever made, with his video for 'Scream' featuring his sister Janet Jackson costing a whopping $7,000,000 to create (made in 1995). 

Music videos are becoming increasingly more expensive  and featuring things that would only ever be seen in a film, such as blockbuster style CGI effects, which shows the progression of the music video from the very start with minimal action, to the highly creative works of art that are produce today.