Development

of music videos
2000 to now

some info acquired from: https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/list/8466543/100-greatest-music-videos-of-the-21st-century

 Weapon of choice – Fat
boy slim ft. Christopher
Walken
https://www.youtube.com/wat
ch?v=wCDIYvFmgW8
2000
◦ It’s a song by English Big beat (faster
and heavier beats of Brit-hop) musician,
Fatboy Slim. The music video, directed
by Spike Jonze, features
actor Christopher Walken dancing and
flying around a deserted hotel lobby. At
the beginning he was
contemplating on a chair, and he went
back to the same chair and kept in deep
contemplation at the end as well,
meanwhile the eerie silence and
whirring sounds are the key to this
haunting atmosphere. Weapon of
choice has won multiple awards at
the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards and
won the 2002 Grammy Award for Best
Music Video. It produced a successful
viral video, which has been trending on
Youtube's hot search, allegedly half of
the audiences couldn’t remember the
name of the MV only search with
“Christopher Walken hotel dancing”.
2
 Work it – Missy Elliott
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjIvu7
e6Wq8

In many ways 'Work It' from Missy Eliott is what u would call
avontguard, pushing foward a strong sense of 'weirdness' per
say as Missy Eliott depicts her personal idiosyncrative vison of
a 'warped world' through this MV that is filled with
2002
impresionist framing. From dancing in a post aparcolyptic esk
play ground to swallowing a lamborguiny whole, Missy pushes
imagery in to the mainstream to points where other rappers
and pop stars wouldnt dare to come close with a 10 inch stick
as it was an era before being 'nerdy' and weird had a cultural
cache. 'Work it' pushed its boundaries far beyond what every
one expected amd this it sends a strong message from Missy
of normal is boring and the future belonged to those who
weren't afraid to defy expectations, conventions, and even
gravity on occasion.

3
 A homage to the beetles era
Hey Ya!- Outkast defining appearance on the Ed
Sullivan show back in 1964 . In the
https://www.youtube.com/ MV Andre 3000 portrays as all 8
watch?v=weRHyjj34ZE band members and the
background crew, all in eye
catching green finery. This mastery
use of duplication made the MV
extreamly entertaining to watch,

2003
however, this technique requires
the actor to perform each role
seperatle as during the shoot, Andre
reportedly performed 'hey ya' 23
times. OutKast also single-handedly
revitalized the camera
company’s public image. The Bryan
Barber-directed video later won a
bevy of awards, including video of
the year at the 2004 MTV Video
Music Awards.

4
 Toxic is a dance song with elements of bhangra
music, there are also some fragments of story line in
the music video. In this video Britney has given the
audiences some indelible outfits: stewardess with
Toxic – Britney Spears blond hair, a red haired secrete agent, and the one
https://www.youtube.c with diamond scattered all over her body, which
om/watch?v=LOZuxwV shines when she’s writhing on the floor like a Bond
k7TU girl. The story also presents a lot of incredible
scenes, such as her kiss turning a passenger into a
model; she poisoned her ex-boyfriend(allegedly it's
used to satisfied her imagination of poisoned Justin

2004 Timberlake) then jump off the balcony into the

night; also with that jump she warped back to the
plane with the first look of stewardess again. The
mise en scene’s are fantastic with several shots has
special effect to create a visual impact. This is the
main music video that Britney has changed from
her schoolgirl imagery, and directed her
subsequent 15 years of her career. This song won
Spears her first and only Grammy Award at
the 2005 ceremony in the category of Best Dance
Recording.

5

Here it goes again – Ok Go
https://www.youtube.com/watc
h?v=dTAAsCNK7RA
Ok Go is a prime example of what
the internet is capable in doing.
From a band that no one listends
to to an internet sensation with
their MVs, Ok Go exploaded with
popularity with their hit MV here
it goes again. Till today it still
remains as one of the most

2005 viewed videos of all time with

over 47million views and
rising. Since their first video A

THE YTB ERA

million away turned viral on
youtube, Ok Go has been
breaking their limits in how wild
a MV can be from treadmills to a
single take zero-gravity fall in a
Russian plane, Ok Go constatly
tries to out perform them selvs
and breaks the viewers jaws time
after time with their unrestrined
imagination.

6
 This is quite a simple music video on
production point of view, however, also being a
all time classic and popular MV. Kanye West
nearly committed career suicide when he
Single Ladies (Put a Ring on crashed the MTV VMAs stage in 2010 to
It)- Beyoncé interrupt Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech for
Best Female Video: “I’ma let you finish,” he
https://www.youtube.com/w infamously commented, “but Beyonce had one
atch?v=4m1EFMoRFvY of the best videos of all time!” This MV has only
one scene, Beyonce and two ladies dancing in a
room with basic white walls. Her Black tight
suite and high heels gave an emphasis on her
charming body completed with a smoking hot

2008
choreography. The movement of the camera
and edits energized the music video meaning it
made the dance more powerful, with actions in
the dancing relating to the lyrics, which made
the music video becoming compact with a
plethora of marvelous visuals. In other words,
this music video could be called as Beyonce’s
personal promotion video, the main idea of this
whole video is not only presenting the song
itself, but also advertise Beyonce’s beauty and
charm, and it successed in doing this job. It won
three Grammy Awards in 2010, including Song
of the Year, among other accolades. Several
news media sources named it as one of the best
songs of 2008, while some considered it one of
the best songs of the decade. 7
 Badromance- Lady
gaga
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
PWgvGjAhvIw

Bad romance is a significant challenge of how music video could be

presented, It’s one of the highlights of the album. It was included in
the 'best-of' lists in several media outlets such as Rolling
Stone and Pitchfork Media, and won two Grammy Awards for Best
Female Pop Vocal Performance and Best Short Form Music Video.
Her looks and performance (dancing) in this music video cemented
her “monster” iconography, and stimulates her fanbase. She climbs
out from a coffin which has been written “monster” on the surface,
her totally white tight clothing with crown on her head shows her
2009
monstrous with her strange “zombie” dance. The whole MV includes
many different scenes, includes Lady Gaga dancing, crying,
showering etc. But all these different looks and mise en scenes mixed
together perfectly, as no sense of disharmony happened during the
whole MV. There is also a narrative structure in it, Lady Gaga has been
dragged out from her bathtub, they undressed her and sold her to a
mafia. At the end of the movie there’s fire released from her boobs
and she’s lying on the bed with a burned Human skeleton. The MV
hasn’t only got strong visual impact, the audiences could also find
out many details when we pause the video at any time, it’s definitely
an exquisite music video, and meaningful. That’s why it’s attractive
and re-rules the music video market. 8

Titanium – David Guetta ft. sia
https://www.youtube.com/watc
h?v=JRfuAukYTKg
2011
The MV for 'Titanium' is a classical
narrative MV that pre sents a clear
development in a story of a young boy
acquireing super power and tries to
flee from the police. Interestingly
enough the boy in the MV, which was
played by Ryan Lee also starred in the
movie 'Super 8', a story about
teenagers having super powers. To
many that have only ever listened to
the music but not the MV, the actual
story would give a sense of mistmatch
ot the lyrics. As through lyrics generally
stories that are related to positivity,
being strong are imagined, which
contradicts by this story of a kid
gaining super powers and start
running away. Perhaps there are many
other MV that are better made than
this one, but as a classic to me it
automatically goes up one level in
priority.
9
 Gangnam style – PSY In one sentence to conclude
what type of success Gangnam
https://www.youtube.co
Style was able to achieve,' The
m/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f music that took over the world
0 byb a storm'. This MV from 2012
is a text book example of the
word viral as it became the first
ever video to reach over 1-billion

2012
views. The brainwashing
dancemove and the catchy lyrics
made this MV an internet
sensation over the night and it is
unbelieveable that it has already
been over haf a decade since
Gangnam style was released.
The huge succes that is the
Gangnam style turned the
world's eyes to south korea
music industry. Though it’s no
longer the world’s most-viewed
music video, the legacy of
“Gangnam Style” remains.
10
 Blank space – Taylor Swift
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-
ORhEE9VVg

The song received nominations at the 58th Grammy

Awards for Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best Pop
Solo Performance. According to Taylor, she has been criticized
on writing songs about ex-boyfriends too much, this is a song
she used to fightback to those criticisms, she talked about her

2014
“insane” in the lyric to the audiences, and kept on talking
about ex-boyfriends, it’s not just a song but also a novel about
her own stories. This is more likely to be a narrative music
video, but with perfect visual impact, especially the choose of
surroundings and make- ups. In the MV it tells a love story
from first meeting to the end that the woman (Taylor) killed
her ex-boyfriend who betrayed her. There’s a scene happened
after the woman noticed her boyfriend’s betrayal，they had a
fight where the lyric could perfectly represents what the
woman may ask the man. After they broke up, Taylor cuts her
boyfriend’s photo, and crossed it to show that she wanted to
kill him, and she did it later. She sings with mascara
streaming down her face, which reference to her crazy and
sadness at the same time. The song received nominations at
the 58th Grammy Awards for Record of the Year, Song of the
Year and Best Pop Solo Performance. 11

This is America –
Childish gambino
https://www.youtube.com/watch? hooded
v=VYOjWnS4cMY
This phenomenal music video directed
by Hiro Murai is truely a sight to
behold. In the MV as Childish Gambino
(Donald Glover) dressed in confederate
grey pants with no shirt busting some
hip snapping moves whilst busts a
man's cap off in a pose traight
out of jim crow imagery, the audience
know their in for a treat. This MV is filled
with threads that can be traced back to
real life events, the 12 second silence,
use of phones all scouples out the

2018
grulling problems of the society. This is
America is the MV that we need, but
not what we deserve; It showed that
artists are able to use their tallent for
the good, alarming the world to whats
happening but just like the spray down
of the choir (Charleston church
massacre) in the MV, it will only ever be
memorable amungst small groups
alongside with many other tragedies
that have, as unfortunately it is our
society has a terribly bad memory.
Aside from this This is America won
over 10 awards including 4 Grammies
and 17 nominations, well deserved. 12
 Earth – Lil Dicky 单击此处添加文本
https://www.youtube.com/w
atch?v=pvuN_ WvF1to

2019 till
tday

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