Rich Mix Trip: Part 7

From MTV to Youtube

1980's
The 1980's were a very significant decade for music videos, as in 1981 MTV was launched, a channel solely dedicated to showing songs and their music videos. This was a massive breakthrough for music videos, as it made them more easily accessible, and anyone could view them at any time.

An example of an 80's music video is Madness' 'Our House'. Madness were well known for having weird and wacky music videos to go with their unusual music style and multiple band members.


This is quite similar to the Beatle's 'Can't Buy Me Love', as the editing is quite unusual, and it shows the band as being quirky and wacky. The video is also quite humorous, especially as one of the members of the band is dressed up as the 'mum' figure in the house.

Until the '80's, music was quite Britain - dominated, but artists like Madonna gave American music the spotlight. Madonna was also one of the few female recording artists around at the time, and in this video of her song 'Open Your Heart' she uses her gender to sell the song and her video, whilst still being empowered.



Another social group that weren't often represented in music videos until the 1980's were black music acts. MTV didn't think that their audience involved black people, and felt that black people were the only people who would watch black music videos. Artists like Michael Jackson showed that there was an audience that would happily watch his videos when he released Thriller, one of the most famous music videos of all time:



These music videos are much more the sort we would recognise today, with choreographed dance routines, concepts, and unusual shots. They also all include elements of voyeurism, which is unintentional in most videos, but often present.