Rediscovering Music Videos

Remember back in the days of nostalgic MTV and VH1 when you could turn on the television and spend hours watching countless music videos? It’s been a long time since those channels expanded their repertoire from solely music to teenage moms and original shows. Recently, though, after delving deep into the documentary and music video world of Justin Bieber in my Digital Media Theory class, I rediscovered the joys of music videos. They’re so much more than little nothing videos you used to put on when you couldn’t find the song you wanted to listen to! Each music video has its own taste, style, and message.

Binge watching a bunch of music videos this afternoon for this post; I realized that a lot of music videos are like little movies. They have to tell an entire story in less than four minutes in a creative and entertaining way. And, they have to sell the artist, the song, the album, and the story! That’s got to be hard, but somehow, the creative minds of our world make it work. And really well might I add.

Every music video has to make hundreds of little choices in order to get to the vision the artist wants. Does the artist want to show off his or her musical talents as if he or she is playing or singing live, or would they rather show themselves dancing or going through the motions of a seemingly average or ridiculously extraordinary day? Do they want to be alone or with friends, family, other artists? What is the real message of the song, and how do they want that message to be portrayed? Should the video be shot in color, black and white, sepia? So many choices!

There are so many worthwhile music videos that it was hard for me to choose which ones to highlight, but let’s take a look at a couple of popular videos that I really like.

First, let’s all take a moment to bask in the beauty that is 1998-99 Semisonic and check out “Closing Time”.

Great video right? The split screen makes it so not only do we get to see the story, but we also get a little inside look at the band playing, too. By the end of the song, we really do feel bad for our favorite band member that he doesn’t get to connect with his love interest, just as we would after watching a 90 minutes rom-com. Don’t you just want to give Mr. Glasses a pat on the back?

Okay, moving on. Now let’s take a look at Canada’s real-life Robin Sparkles  in Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe”.

I distinctly remember when my grandma told me to Google this video because, as she put it, “the ending is just so cute!” Here, we do get to see Carly singing along, but the story is almost more important to the video than Carly’s vocals. If not for Carly’s crush and the surprise ending, this music video would be a lot less interesting, but because we have all of that included, watching the music video is really fun to watch.

Of course there are thousands of music videos and these two definitely do not encompass all that goes on in the music video industry, but I hope they did get you a little more excited about the joys of these videos. Who knows, maybe your favorite song has the best video of all time and I’ve never seen it? If you think that might be the case, post your favorite music video in the comments so I can spend more of my time sitting in front of my computer jamming out to little music video movies. I’d love to broaden my music video horizons!