(Credits: Far Out / Open Culture)
Sat 13 December 2025 19:00, UK
The music video is a lost art form. We really miss out on some of the exceptional visuals that come along with a good video, but that’s the way the world has gone.
Musical evolution is always going to be a pretty important factor when it comes to how the industry operates. The common misconception is that people think such evolution only occurs within the music itself, but there’s a lot more to it than that. Yes, the way actual music changes obviously has a huge impact on the industry, but you also need to consider the different ways that music is made, marketed, released, and consumed.
There was never much of a need for music videos prior to music TV channels (namely MTV). People consumed music on the radio and using vinyls, it was wholly an audio-based art form, so why would artists bother making a music video when chances are people are hardly going to see it? It’s pretty tricky pinning down when the first actual music video was released, given a lot of songs prior to the ‘60s were popular because they appeared in various soundtracks and on films, which all technically count as videos, but there are a few stand out moments.
Bob Dylan was one of them with his offering on ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’, where he filmed himself dropping cue cards with the lyrics on them. People also cite Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ as being one of the iconic music videos that made the creation of them so necessary. When we flip through the pages of music history, in recent decades, there have been plenty of cinematic offerings.
You don’t see them as much in the modern age. A lot of bands will still make a music video because it gives them something they can put on YouTube and cut up for social media, but it’s not as necessary in the age of streaming, so those we do see are of a pretty low quality. Channels such as MTV don’t carry as much weight, and people still stumble upon new songs and singles without there being a music video to watch.
It’s interesting how much music videos have changed the perception of some songs. For instance, while Guns N’ Roses weren’t considered one of the most emotional bands, they had moments when they let some emotions creep into their music. Axl Rose did this on the song ‘Estranged,’ which spoke of feeling lonesome in the heat of a divorce. While the song was a nice insight into the heart of a rockstar, the music video was a bit more complicated than that, featuring Slash coming out of the ocean, and more controversially, Axl Rose being treated like royalty in his own home. The video rubbed a lot of fans the wrong way, as they felt a song that people might have been able to connect with was now excluded from because of the overwhelming grandeur.
“Who the fuck does he think he is going to honestly connect with besides Donald Trump?” Asked Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell when discussing the music video, “Who else is going to give a s–t about the fact that he can afford that kind of attention? It goes beyond decadence, it’s spitting in the face of the people that have put you there. I was offended by it, and I don’t get offended by much.”
Then you get other reactions to music videos which are less scorn and more confusion. Jimmy Page was a whizz on the guitar and a genius in the studio, but he wasn’t great when it came to using a camera. When Led Zeppelin was asked to make music videos, despite their music being heavily narrative-driven and mystical, their videos were somewhat tame. Page didn’t try too hard to understand music videos and instead just grew to appreciate them as an art form. This led to some pretty comical confusion, as there was a ZZ Top clip that the guitarist could never quite wrap his head around.
“All I can say to you is if you’ve seen ZZ Top’s latest one [‘Rough Boy’] then you could see how I’d say to somebody, ‘I have this idea but I don’t know how it’s done’,” he explained, “There are techniques which I’ve been away from for a long time and I wouldn’t know. I’m determined to find out how some of that [ZZ Top] video was done.”
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