Music Video Theories

Music Videos and its Theories

By Haja Bangura

Andrew Goodwin

• There are 3 ways in which a music video works to promote a song:

• Illustrate – use of a set of images to illustrate the meaning of the song and genre

• Amplify – meanings and effects are manipulated and constantly shown throughout the video and drummed into our vision

• Disjuncture – where the meaning of the song is completely ignored.

Sven E Carlsson

• Carlsson believes that one of the most common methods of analysis is to break up the music video into black and white boxes.

• Music videos fall into two categories:

• Performance • Conceptual

Sven E Carlsson

• Performance – where the audience is able to see the artist singing and dancing throughout

Sven E Carlsson

• Conceptual – when the audience watch something other than the artist of the song

Michael Shore

• He concludes that music videos are recycled styles that contain an information overload therefore contains views of adolescent male fantasies.

• Most videos contain elements of speed, power, girls, wealth and living the ‘ideal life’

Michael Shore

• Music video examples of the theory