If you wish to beneath­stand the his­to­ry of music movies, you need to con­sid­er numerous issues that aren’t obvi­ous­ly music movies. The Bug­gles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star,” the primary selec­tion of MTV’s inau­gur­al broad­cast, should positive­ly depend as a music video — however then, it was professional­duced a cou­ple years ear­li­er for the a lot dif­fer­ent con­textual content of the British chart professional­gram Prime of the Pops, very like Queen’s pro­to music video for “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” from 1975. However is Bob Dylan’s much-par­o­died card-drop­ping “per­for­mance” of “Sub­ter­ranean Home­sick Blues” from a decade ear­li­er, shot for D. A. Pen­nebak­er’s Dont Look Again, a music video? What about A Laborious Day’s Evening, the Bea­t­les’ exu­ber­ant­ly nar­ra­tive-light movie from the yr earlier than?

All of those come up in the new his­to­ry of the music video from YouTube chan­nel Poly­phon­ic above, which com­piles into an over three-hour-long view­ing expe­ri­ence all the episodes of its series on the sub­ject. In its lengthy his­tor­i­cal view, the music video did­n’t start with the Fab 4, and never even with their epoch-mak­ing seem­ance on The Ed Sul­li­van Present.

One can hint it far­ther again, previous Sco­pi­tone movie juke­field­es (includ­ed in “the canon of Camp” by Susan Son­tag in her famous essay); previous Dis­ney’s Fan­ta­sia (essen­tial­ly eight ani­mat­ed clas­si­cal music movies strung togeth­er); previous even The Jazz Singer, the primary fea­ture-length musi­cal “talkie,” which in 1927 put a defin­i­tive finish to the period of silent movie.

Per­haps the ear­li­est iden­ti­fi­in a position pre­de­ces­sor of the music video is “The Lit­tle Lost Child,” which in 1894 was exhib­it­ed as an “illus­trat­ed tune.” Its deliv­ery of a nar­ra­tive by professional­ject­ed nonetheless photos accom­pa­nied by dwell piano was like noth­ing its audi­ences had expe­ri­enced earlier than, with an emo­tion­al pow­er larger than the sum of its visu­al and musi­cal elements. This was a model new tech­nol­o­gy, and certainly, like all cul­tur­al his­to­ry, that of the music video can also be a tech­no­log­i­cal his­to­ry, one superior by movie, broad­solid tele­vi­sion, cable tele­vi­sion, and in our time, inter­internet stream­ing, which stayed the for­m’s loom­ing prospect of pop-cul­tur­al irrel­e­vance. Now, within the twen­ty-twen­ties, we should ask our­selves this: when Tik­Tok customers put up them­selves danc­ing, zoom­ing in on pan­truffles, or skate­board­ing while drink­ing Ocean Spray, is it a music video?

Relat­ed con­tent:

The 50 Great­est Music Videos of All Time, Ranked by AV Club

Michel Gondry’s Finest Music Videos for Björk, Radio­head & More: The Last of the Music Video Gods

Watch the First Two Hours of MTV’s Inau­gur­al Broad­cast (August 1, 1981)

David Bowie Releas­es 36 Music Videos of His Clas­sic Songs from the 1970s and 1980s

Jim Jarmusch’s Anti-MTV Music Videos for Talk­ing Heads, Neil Young, Tom Waits & Big Audio Dyna­mite

David Lynch’s Music Videos: Nine Inch Nails, Moby, Chris Isaak & More

Based mostly in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His tasks embrace the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the guide The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll by Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social internet­work for­mer­ly generally known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.