The History Of Music Vidoes

Over the years music videos have become something of the norm, however they haven’t always been around. The creation of the film and cinema brought the prospect of uniting music and moving images. Since then progression in technology as turned this early music video into what we have today. 

1920’s: During the 1920’s a number of Jazz musicians created short films to accompaniment popular songs. One such artist was Bessie Smith.

1965: Recognised as one of the first modern music videos, is Bob Dylan’s ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ as a section of the film ‘Don’t Look Back’.

1970: During 1970 the record industry discovered that they could use television shows as a great opening to promote their artists. The record labels would create short ‘promos’, which were like early music videos, however they began replacing the live performances of the artists on the TV-stage.

1975: In this year the band Queen commenced the music video era with their ground-breaking ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ video. As the first to include visual effects in the art of the video it set a high standard for the modern music video.

Mid 1980’s: By this point having a music video accompanying a single had become a standardized thing.