The many types of music videos can be boiled down to three categories:
(i) Performance
(ii) Narrative
(iii) Concept
(i) Performance
With elements like musicians lip-syncing, dancing, playing various instruments, etc, performance-based music videos are perhaps the oldest and most common form of music videos.
One might assume such videos to be the embodiment of a stale piece of bread—rather basic, dull, or yawn-inducing if you will—however, it’s remarkable how many artists find ways to incorporate creativity into performance-based videos.
It is also important to note that these videos assume many types; often overlapping with other types of music videos, the filmed performances may be instrumental, live, incorporating dance, etc.
Performance-based videos primarily serve the purpose of highlighting an artist.
One Summer Day
Joe Hisaishi
Joe Hisaishi’s One Summer's Day music video, for example, is a purely performance-based one, with no external variables that may distract the audience from the pianist.
Still Feel
Half Alive
The music video of Still Feel by Half Alive, featuring the trio of band members performing intricate dance choreography, achieves something much similar in a more upbeat manner. Shot in a single take and washed in neon lighting, the video is a great example of artists incorporating refreshing elements into a performance-based music video and moving away from notions of it being basic.
I also find it rather intriguing how performance-based music videos manage to create an atmosphere that coincides with their music often without any narrative or conceptual aspects.
The monochrome imagery of One Summer’s Day paired with the incessant motion of the changing background visuals perfectly sets a tone reminiscent of nostalgia, a distant summer day, and the bittersweetness of growing up, making the video reflective in a way that echoes the complexity and themes of Spirited Away (2001)—the soundtrack of which this song belongs to—and its protagonist, Chihiro.
Still Feel, too, captures the sense of rejuvenation the song’s music and lyrics centralise. Needless to say, the playful nature of the choreography and setting also contribute to creating this atmosphere—kudos to Bruce Wayne for lending Half Alive his basement.
(ii) Narrative
These videos are the professional version of the fake scenarios your brain makes when listening to music while looking out of the car window and imagining a dramatic visual story complete with a three-act structure or Save the Cat’s fifteen beats. In all seriousness, though, narrative-based music videos employ storytelling, mostly to enhance an audience’s experience of listening to and understanding a song. Typically (but not always) following conventional narrative structures (i.e. beginning, middle, end), these are essentially like short films based on songs.
Goodwin’s exploration of amplification, illustration, and disjuncture is greatly discernible in this type of music video; in the light of this notion, a narrative music video’s visuals may be linked with the song in one of the following ways:
(i) literal — directly bases visuals on the lyrics
(ii) amplified — enhances the meaning of a song by creating close links between a music video and the lyrics
(iii) oppositional — unrelated to the song, i.e. demonstrates a disjuncture b/w the meaning of the music video and the lyrics
Examples of music videos that employ an illustrative approach, deepening the audience’s understanding of the song through their narratives and visuals which are closely related to the central themes and concerns of the lyrics:
For Lovers Who Hesitate
Jannabi
The video (much like the lyrics of the song) depicts, you guessed it, a hesitant lover and the bittersweet ending to a relationship, one that he silently yearns for, one that never began.
Cherry Wine
Hozier
Part of Hozier’s campaign to support domestic abuse charities, the music video powerfully captures the nuances of the victim's emotions and the difficulties of leaving an abusive relationship—which is also what the song centralises.
(iii) Concept
Either subtle abstractions or something like what an individual might dream of after one too many cups of caffeine, conceptual music videos are perhaps my favourite as an enthusiast of all things that make you go, “wow this makes no sense, five stars out of five.” However, that is not to say that concept-based videos have to be entirely unusual; they could be abstract or irrelevant to the music in an artistic way too and often give an artist the freedom to expand and fully represent their creative vision which may not necessarily be related to a song's lyrics.
I Promise
Radiohead
This particular music video by Radiohead features a nighttime bus journey through Warsaw with one passenger being a detached animatronic head. It’s rather difficult to form any connections between the lyrics of the song and what’s depicted in the video which is why we can categorise it as a conceptual one.
A Pearl
Mitski
With no overtly discernible link between the meanings of the almost-impressionistic video and the song, Mitksi’s A Pearl is very similar in nature. It’s also an important reminder that various mediums can be used to create music videos—such as animation.
Although the idea of putting music videos in neat little boxes is a rather tempting one for my neat-freak self, we also can’t deny that this may be a reductive approach; music videos usually exist on a spectrum and can be an amalgamation of multiple structures.
Cold Cold Cold
Cage The Elephant
Rolling Stone describes the video as “a horrific journey filled with drug injections, creepy masks, dancing nurses, sword swallowing, flexing pectoral muscles and decapitation”[1] interspersed with clips of Cage the Elephant performing the song.
Someone New
Hozier
Someone New features the artist’s performance of the song and simultaneously a distressed woman flitting around a city, seemingly hooking up with a plethora of people.
These videos, thus, combine concept and performance, and narrative and performance respectively, illustrating that music videos are not always limited to just one type and can be innovative in unique ways that may help an artist shape their star identity.
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