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St Louis Blues - Bessie Smith
Blues singer Bessie Smith appeared in a two-reel short film called St Louis Blues featuring a dramatized performance of the song. -
Fantasia
In 1940 Walt Disney released Fantasia, an animated film based around famous pieces of classical music. -
Stranger in Paradise - Tony Bennett
Tony Bennett was filmed along The Serpentine in Hyde Park in London as his recording of Stranger in Paradise. This was distributed to UK and US television stations. -
Scopitone
Around 1960, the Scopitone, a visual jukebox was invented in France. Short films were produced by many French artists to accompany the music. -
A Hard Day's Night - The Beatles
Directed by Richard Lester, the musical segments in this film arguably set out the basic visual vocabulary of todays music videos. -
Strawberry Fields Forever & Penny Lane - The Beatles
Techniques used from underground underground and avant garde film, such as reversed film effects, dramatic lighting, unusual camera angles and rhythmic editing. -
Top of the Pops
Top of the Pops created competition between record labels to make the best music video. Top of the Pops had a limit of videos they were able to show in one episode so artists needed to have the best to increase sales. -
Bohemian Rhapsody
Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody started a whole new ear for using music videos as promos. -
MTV
MTV was launched. The first music video to be broadcasted was Buggles - Video Killed the Radio Star -
Thriller
Michael Jackson was the first artist to create the concept of a short film. He did this with Billie Jean and Beat It. The release of Thriller took the concept to new heights. -
Madonna
Madonna owes a lot of her success to the skillful construction and seductive appeal of her videos. -
Modern Day
In the technology era, music videos now apporach the popularity of the songs themselves, being sold in collections on VHS and DVD. The videos are now appreciated for their visual qualities not the music.
