Iconic Music Videos

Music videos on the whole will always be seen all over the world as the one of the most efficient and enjoyable ways of listening to your favourite songs. With different ways of viewing these videos - like through entire channels on the television devoted to showing them to the public or through the worldwide sensation that is youtube - more and more artists are becoming legendary not only because of there great music, but because of the videos that they produce. 

A perfect example of how a single man can have the world transfixed on the television for the entirety of a song would be the video to Michael Jacksons 'Thriller'.

Produced in 1984 with now 117,931,644 Youtube views this is undoubtedly one of the worlds most iconic music videos. The famous dance that is featured in the video when Jackson is dancing in the street with the zombies has been comically featured in several films such as '13 going on 30.'

The fact that the actual 'Thriller' song doesnt even start until 4 minutes into the video shows how the video is meant to be seen as a story rather than just an ordinary music video.

Thriller is considered an iconic music video due to the fact that it was directed by John Landis, Landis is a famous film director who has directed films such as 'American Werewolf in London' and 'Blues Brothers 2000,' Jackson and Landis collaborated and wrote the screenplay for the 'Thriller' video together. The fact that the video was directed by a well known film director shows the importance of the video; can it technically be called a music video? Or should it be referred to as a short film

Secondly, the video is seen as iconic because of the visually dynamic mise en scene that is used. The costumes of the walking dead as well as the outfit that Jackson is wearing - which is so well known that it is even used as a choice for fancy dress - are brilliantly thought out and designed. The contacts that Jackson is wearing in the conclusion to the film tie the entire thing together

Not only did Jackson and Landis collaborate for the 'Thriller' video but they also collaborated for Jacksons video to 'Black or White', an 11 minute video that was a lot less well received when compared to the 'Thriller' video with a mediocre 5,443,613 views. Both of these music videos display Jackson as a 'triple threat,' they both show his amazing talents in dancing, singing and acting. It is for this reason that Landis directed the video, in order to guide Jackson in the acting part of the video. The video to 'Black or White' actually featured child star, Macaulay Culkin, the close friendship that he and Jackson formed was later an infamous source of debate in the allegations against Jackson that he had sexually abused children.

Landis and Jackson had formed a strong friendship after filming the 'Thriller' video, which would explain why Landis happily returned to direct the 'Black and White' video despite the fact that he had not actually been paid for his contributions to 'Thriller' due to the amount of money that Jackson owed Sony. Here is the link to an interesting interview with Jackson and Landis together, it interestingly shows the relationship that the pair had, and also shows how Jackson's transition into a wolf was done http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PyRtAUny7M



The second video that I am going to talk about crosses the fine line between genre's and produces a collaboration of rock and roll and hip hop. Almost a decade after Aerosmith's 'Walk This Way' was released, Run-DMC sampled the famous jagged guitar lick and got in touch with Aerosmith. In 1986, a mixed-genre music video was born and now has over 7,242,464 hits on youtube. 

The basis of the video is simplistic yet comical. Aerosmith are seen to be having a band practice to the dismay of their next door neighbors - the boys of Run-DMC - in retalliation, the Run-DMC boys adjust the song adding rap and scratching records to create the hip hop sound along side the rock and roll guitar lick. 

Run-DMC as a band are the most influential hip hop band that has existed in the music industry, they were the first rap artists to have been nominated for grammy's as well as the first band of the genre to have their music video's featured on MTV, they practically opened the door for the rap genre of music to evolve. If you look at the various rap artists that exist today it is hard to think that the first rap video was only shown on television 30 years ago.

As time has gone on, music videos have become less about creating a story for the chosen song, and more about trying to portray and wide-spread an artists reputation. Women like Beyonce and Nikki Minaj try to attract the male gaze and focus on looking glamourous rather than telling a story in their videos. In the modern day music industry music video's have become a much more serious institution. Artists can no longer mock themselves through the medium of music video's, they feel as though they must conform to what the public expects them to be - which is perfect. However, there are still musicians that happily mock themselves in their music video's, for example, the Foo Fighters 'Learn to Fly' video openly ridicules themselves as a band and provides a comical video for their fans to watch.

An example of how a very simplistic music video can still be seen as iconic is Beyonce's 'Single Ladies' video. It is merely 3 women wearing black leotards yet still looking very glamourous performing a dance routine. The black clothing contrasts with the white background and makes the video look very professional. Produced in 2008 it now has over 190,563,195 youtube hits. 

This video is also an example of the fact that no matter how iconic a video may be, it can still sometimes become the source of ridicule. Similarly to The Verve's 'Bittersweet Symphony' being mocked and parodied by 'fat les', this video was part of a skit on Saturday Night Live where Justin Timberlake attempted the dance of the video. 

Recent artists have produced videos that in years to come will be seen as iconic. The very comical video that has been released by the Black Keys ('Lonely Boy') already has 17,846,780 youtube hits since its recent release in October 2011. This up and coming band is seen by many as funny and they produce excellent music. This video has had an excellent reception from fans of the band and the dance is even recited at concerts when the song is performed.

The massively famous video to 'Here it Goes Again' by OK Go, has sparked spoof adverts and has gained over 14 million views on youtube. The simple yet effective video is comical and well thought out.

This elaborate dance was choreographed by Trish Sie and the video was directed by the band along with Sie, this video won a Grammy in 2007 for Best Short Form Music Video. The simplicity of this video is what makes it iconic, aside from the cost of the treadmills, is it obvious that loads of cash wasnt splashed out on the video to make it amazing, it is simply the band, the treadmills and a well thought out dance routine.

Finally, I am going to end this post with literally the most iconic music video of all time. Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody.' After the amazing success that this video achieved, other record labels started regularly producing and releasing promitional videos, this means that this video was ultimately the first ever music video which created a domino effect for all following music videos to follow.  It is said that this music video launched the MTV age, it was orginally created so that the band could avoid miming on Top of the Pops, because they had already been seen miming to such a complex song. The video starts with an image of the band singing which then is covered by a faded picture of the late Freddie Mercury, the majority of the visual effects in this video arent actually achieved through editing, but were done when filming instead. The honeycomb illusion was done by using a shaped lense...

This famous picture of the band was actually their favourite image that was ever taken of them. It is widely recodnised which also shows how influential and iconic the video actually was.