History of Music Videos

RISE OF POPULARITY

By the end of the 60s, music videos had increased in popularity dramatically. This increase can be credited to The Beatles, who were arguably the first band to use music videos as a promotional tool for their songs. Their practice commenced as far back as 1965. Music videos such as Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane featured attractive, colorful visuals and creativity, such as the reversal of clips (a clip of Paul McCartney falling from a tree then walking backwards was reversed to make it appear as though he had jumped onto the tree) and impressive artistic cinematography.
The band had become extremely popular to the point that they wished to move past traditional performance music videos and live shows, which they found to be mundane. Also, they weren't able to appear on all of the TV stations that wanted them. In 1965 they began to make a series of promotional films that would include quirky scenes and humour. Some of these videos complemented the short films they had made, such as I Am The Walrus, a song that was featured in their film Magical Mystery Tour.

Development of music videos with Queen
In the 70s, Queen were facing a problem, which was that they could not appear on Top Of The Tops as they were busy on tour. They took a few days out of their schedule to create the music video for Bohemian Rhapsody in 1975. It was made on a budget of £4,000 (a considerable sum during that era) and was recorded on a relatively new medium of video tape. There was no such thing as home video recorders until the late 70s/early 80sm, but broadcasters had been recording TV shows on huge 2 inch video tapes.

The music video for Bohemian Rhapsody has become somewhat iconic, spawning several tributes and parodies from other music videos and films.