History of Music Videos

First emergence of music video's

Sep 13, 1926

Max Fleischer's 'screen songs' were sing along short cartoons. These showed an early emergence of a relationship between music and visuals, to form the music video.

Bessie Smith Performance

Sep 13, 1929

Blues singer Bessie Smith sang a theatrical performance of St.Louis Blues, in a two reel film of the same title.

Walt Disney Films

Sep 13, 1930

Early Disney animated short films, were centred around classical music.

Soundies

Sep 13, 1940

Soundies were three minute musical films. Like later music videos, they alos included dance sequences.

Louis Jordan

Sep 13, 1940

This musician used to make short films for his songs during the fourties.

Tony Bennet- Stranger in Paradise

Sep 13, 1956

In his autobiography, Bennet claims to have created the first music video, with his song 'Stranger in Paradise' accompanied with visuals of him along the Serpentine in Hyde Park.

The Beatles- Strawberry Fields Forever

Sep 13, 1967

The promotional video that supported this Beatles song is of historical importance due to it's use slow motion, fades and the use of unusual camera angles, it meant that it developed the level of sophistication in music videos.

'Countdown' and 'Sounds'- Music Programmes

Sep 13, 1974

Australia created two music programmes, which mainly featured music videos, sometimes especially made for the show. These shows helped establish the prominence of music videos.

Bowie's 'Ashes to Ashes' breaks record for music video expense

Sep 13, 1980

David Bowie's track broke the record for the production cost of a music video, at $582,000. It was the first video to have over $500,000 spent on it. It became one of the most iconic music video's ever, because of it's solarisation, as well as black and white scenes. It was also shot at multiple locations.

First MTV Music Video

Sep 13, 1981

The Buggles song: 'Video Killed the Radio Star' was the first music video to be aired on MTV. It was extremely significance, as it would then see the rise of music video's on television, and it's eventual dominance.

Micheal Jackson- Thriller

Dec 2, 1983

Thriller is listed as the most successful music video of all time, in the Guiness book of records. This is evidence alone for how significant this video was. Boating a theatrical 13 minute run time, and directed by Hollywood director John Landis, it was a very important moment in music video history.

Madonna- Like a Prayer

Mar 21, 1989

This was one of the most controversial music video's of it's time, because of it's seductive nature and the artist's revealing costume. As well as this, it's heavy links to race created widespread against across America.

Rise of Directors

Nov 13, 1992

In 1992, MTV began listing the director, along with the artist in the song credits. This showed the importance of the director's creative vision in the music video's. Many directors of popular music video's at the time, went on to direct feature films. F. Gary Gray, who directed Dr.Dre's and Ice Cube's song: 'Natural Born Killaz', went on to direct 'Straight Outta Compton' in 2015.

Weezer- Buddy Holly

Sep 13, 1994

Directed by Spike Jonze, this music video was an intertextual reference to the programme 'Happy Days', with the band playing on the show. It became a successful music video.

Youtube

Feb 14, 2005

The invention of Youtube would completely change the exhibition of the music video. Not only would it make it far easier for smaller bands to have their music video's watched, it made the accessibility and popularity of the format huge.

Psy- Gangham Style

Jul 16, 2012

The video for this song would become the most watched youtube music video ever, with the views at over 2 billion as of the 13th September 2016. It showed of just how much Youtube and the internet had on the development of the music video.