If video killed the radio star, then reality TV killed the music video.
These days, popular television's idea of music programming is the karaoke suckfest of "American Idol." This trend has even extended to MTV, where shows like the "Real World" and "Road Rules" began transforming the music video homeland into a reality TV trash heap in the '90s. An infestation of newer celebrity shows such as "The Osbournes" and "Newlyweds" have resulted in a dearth of actual music on the "Music Television" channel and its subsidiary VH1, exiling the music videos to the wasteland of early-morning programming and spin-off channels.
Perhaps the day the music video truly died was the day "Date My Mom" premiered on MTV.
Not surprisingly, the music videos themselves have been getting worse overall. In MTV's heyday, the video was an art form, and eras were marked by leaps of innovation: Michael Jackson's 13-minute popcorn-horror feature for "Thriller," Peter Gabriel's stop-motion animation on "Sledgehammer" and Madonna's cross burning in "Like a Prayer," to name a few.
Music videos mattered; Madonna based her career on her outlandish music videos, starting with 1984's "Like A Virgin," which features Madonna cavorting around Venice with a random lion. The delightfully over-the-top video culminated with a hilarious bridal scene between the Queen of Pop and a tuxedoed lion-man, but not before a lot of sexy wallowing about on a gondola earned Madonna a spot in the sex-kitten pop-star pantheon forever.
And Michael Jackson became the King of Pop through the cinematic storytelling of videos like "Smooth Criminal" and "Beat It," which climax in a shootout and a knife-fight, respectively.
Modern-day videos, for the most part, haven't matched these standards. It's a sharp drop in quality from the Jackson masterpieces of the early eighties to the pointless posing in R&B videos by the likes of Usher. Sure, the man's got great moves, but his video can't tell a story or leave an impression like MJ's can.
Now, revolution is at hand, as the Internet creates more outlets for music videos, allowing more artists to make them in the first place. We are at the dawn of a new age for the music video as artists begin to make the kind of imaginative concept videos last seen when rock stars used hairspray and every hit song, regardless of genre, was driven by a stadium-size snare drum backbeat.
MySpace and YouTube have revitalized music videos on the Internet, drawing tens of millions of users with the former's abundance of artist-posted videos and the latter's plethora of parodies. Yahoo and AOL provide streaming video content, MTV has launched an online channel called "Overdrive," and iTunes sold more than 1,000,000 music videos just three weeks after debuting the service last year.
A number of Internet music-video success stories have followed the increase of venues. OK Go was a little-known Chicago pop/garage rock outfit until the summer of 2005, when the seven-year old band videotaped themselves dancing along to their single "A Million Ways." Their elaborate routine, choreographed by the lead singer's ballroom dancer sister and filmed in a backyard for about $20, earned the band millions of online viewers.
OK Go managed to top the antics of "A Million Ways" this summer with the release of their video for "Here It Goes Again," which debuted at No. 11 on the VH1 Top 20 Countdown. The video features another dance routine, but adds an element of danger with two rows of moving treadmills. Of course, you have to see it to truly understand.
More recently, David Hasselhoff released an awesomely bad new video for his chart-topping (in the U.K., Australia and, of course, Germany) single "Jump In My Car." Here the Hoff entices a much younger woman into a sports car to rival KITT from Knight Rider, before kicking her out with a handy seat-launcher function.
And Weird Al is back with a new album and a great new video for its single, "White & Nerdy," which depicts him being white and nerdy in the many ways that the song describes.
But the best indicator of the music video vibrancy is the return of high-concept videos in the Jackson tradition. When Alien Ant Farm covered "Smooth Criminal" in 2001, the music video was crude in comparison with the original. Whereas the Jackson video depicted a Prohibition-era shootout with groundbreaking cinematography and choreography, AAF's version reflected modern videos by showing footage of the band playing to fans in a boxing ring and a suburban front lawn.
Now kick-ass concept videos are in the midst of a comeback. While OK Go was crafting their first dance-rock triumph, R. Kelly was creating a video series for his epic "hip-hopera," "Trapped In The Closet." A mix between R&B music and soap opera storytelling, the 12-part song weaves a twisted, melodramatic and often inane tale concerning, in no particular order, a cheating husband, a hick wife, a gay preacher and a well-endowed midget named "Big Man." Actually, almost everybody in the storyline is cheating on his or her spouse, often with the spouse of his or her spouse's fling, etc.
On its own, the concept isn't particularly invigorating, but when Kelly made a music video to go with the tongue-in-cheek narrative, the result was instant internet glory. Not bad, considering the last big splash Kelly made was with a video of him peeing on a 14-year-old girl.
Kelly provides the voices for all the characters in his throaty croon as he recounts the tale, seeming to reach higher and higher notes with each chapter. He even switches to a southern accent for the only white character in the story, the policeman's wife. The result is both comedic and impressive, perfectly pairing the over-the-top tendencies of R&B music with their soap opera counterparts. The first 12 chapters clock in at over forty minutes but entertain the entire time, and there may be more on the way.
MTV's top music video during its inaugural year (1981) was, appropriately enough, the Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star." For the past decade, the video was mostly dead as well. Now the music video is finally showing signs of life again, thanks in large part to the Internet, a few treadmills and an R&B artist currently on trial for child pornography charges.
Alec Luhn is the Associate ArtsEtc. Editor and a sophomore intending to major in journalism. Want to talk music with him? Direct any questions or comments to [email protected].
