Analysing Music Video

Introduction

Music video is one of the most theorised forms on the AQA specification. Born in the MTV era (launched 1981) and transformed by YouTube (launched 2005) and TikTok (post-2018), it occupies a curious space: part promotional tool, part art form, part fan ritual. The CSPs typically pair historical videos — often from the MTV-era canon — with contemporary examples, allowing students to trace how the conventions, representations, industries, and audience relationships of music video have evolved.

This lesson covers two essential theorists — Carol Vernallis on music video form and Andrew Goodwin on genre and star image — together with the wider industrial context of YouTube distribution, the economics of the music video as a promotional loss-leader, and the blurring of music video into TikTok and short-form social media content.

What Is a Music Video?

A music video is a short-form audiovisual text whose primary purpose is to promote a piece of music. That promotional purpose shapes its form: it is shorter than a film (typically 3–5 minutes), it is structured around the track rather than around narrative, and it is designed to be rewatched.

Music videos sit at the intersection of:

• The recording industry (which commissions them to sell tracks).
• The star system (which uses them to build artist image).
• Film and TV production (which provides personnel and techniques).
• Digital platforms (which now host and distribute them).
• Fan culture (which remixes, covers, and analyses them).

Vernallis: Conventions of Music Video Form

Carol Vernallis's work on music video emphasises that it is a distinct audiovisual form, not reducible to either film or advertising. Her analysis focuses on how music video disrupts the conventions of narrative cinema to privilege the song.

Key Vernallis concepts

1. Narrative disruption and fragmentation — music videos resist the causal, linear storytelling of classical cinema. A video may tell a story, but it will break, loop, or abandon it in ways a film would not.
2. Editing to the beat — cuts fall on beats and lyrical accents, creating a rhythmic dialogue between image and music.
3. The star body — the performer's body is the central image, often returned to between other material.
4. Diegesis is unstable — a music video does not commit to a single story-world. Characters change costume, location, role.
5. Repetition and return — motifs recur, in rhythm with the song's structural repetitions (verse, chorus, verse).

Vernallis argues that these conventions are not shortcomings — they are the form's expressive strengths. A music video does not fail to be a film; it succeeds at being a music video.

Goodwin: Music Video as Genre

Andrew Goodwin's 1992 book Dancing in the Distraction Factory provided one of the first systematic frameworks for analysing music video. His approach is broadly structural and generic.

Goodwin's six features of music video

1. Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics. A rock video looks different from a hip-hop video, which looks different from a country video — partly because the music differs, partly because the visual codes of the genre differ.
2. There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals. This relationship can be:
   • Illustrative — the visuals show what the lyrics describe.
   • Amplifying — the visuals extend or emphasise the lyrics' meaning.
   • Disjunctive — the visuals contradict or ironise the lyrics.
3. There is a relationship between music and visuals. Cutting, movement, and pacing are tied to the track's tempo and structure.
4. The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close-ups of the artist. The star must be visible and marketable.
5. There is frequently reference to the notion of looking (particularly the voyeuristic treatment of women). Goodwin draws on Laura Mulvey's concept of the male gaze.
6. There is often intertextual reference — to films, TV shows, other music videos, art.

graph TD
  A[Music Video] --> B[Genre characteristics]
  A --> C[Lyrics/visuals relationship]
  A --> D[Music/visuals relationship]
  A --> E[Star close-ups]
  A --> F[Notion of looking]
  A --> G[Intertextuality]

Vernallis and Goodwin compared

Dimension	Goodwin	Vernallis
Focus	Genre and star image	Form and audiovisual aesthetics
Key concept	Six features of music video	Narrative disruption, editing to music
Approach	Structuralist, industry-aware	Close textual, formalist
Useful for	Genre/representation questions	Language/editing questions

Do not conflate the two. Vernallis emphasises editing, fragmentation, and form; Goodwin emphasises genre, star, and the lyrics-music-visual triad. Both theorists are useful; they illuminate different things.

Star Image

Music video is a primary vehicle for constructing and maintaining star image — the persona the artist projects, which is then consumed and interpreted by fans. Richard Dyer's work on stardom, developed for cinema, transfers readily to music: the star is a complex, constructed sign, assembled from performance, biography, interview, image, and scandal.

Music video is particularly important in star construction because:

• The artist is literally visible for the duration.
• The artist is usually the protagonist.
• Video choices — costume, location, choreography, performance style — are in effect statements by the artist (even when made by directors and labels).
• Repeated viewing embeds the image in fan consciousness.