Blog 6: Key Features of a Pop video

Whether videos are primarily performance-based, narrative-based or concept-based. It’s about how the elements for each one are used. Goodwin’s categories can be used to analyse music videos.

Illustrate - Music videos can use a set of images to illustrate the meaning of lyrics & genre, this is the most common

Amplify - This is similar to repeatability. Meanings and effects are manipulated and constantly shown through the video and drummed into our vision

Disjuncture - This is where the meaning of the song is completely ignored. 

We only a gist of the meaning of the song and then make up our own idea of what is being told. Goodwin explains that music videos should ignore common narrative. It is important in their role of advertising. Music videos should have coherent repeatability. Narrative and performance work hand in hand. It makes it easier for the audience to watch over and over without losing interest. The artist acting as both narrator & participant helps to increase the authenticity however the lip synch and other mimed actions remains the heart of music videos. The audience need to believe this is real. 

A Commissioner from a record label sends a track to 5-10 directors. The directors then each submit a treatment. This stage is unpaid. The director who has submitted the best treatment is then commissioned to make the video. Only then is the director paid.

The reason this music video is regarded as important as it was the first music video to really have an impact on sales, after the video release the song went to number one. It can also be seen as a work of art. 

When it was released as a single, Bohemian Rhapsody became a commercial success staying at the top of the UK Singles Chart for nine weeks and selling more than a million copies in 1976. It reached number one again in 1991 for five weeks following Mercury's death, it then became the UK's third best-selling single of all time. It topped the charts in several other markets as well Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and The Netherlands. In the United States the song originally peaked at number nine in 1976. It returned to the chart at number two in 1992 following its appearance in the film Wayne's World, which made it popular.

Although critical reaction was initially mixed, Bohemian Rhapsody remains one of Queen's most popular songs and is placed on modern lists of the greatest songs of all time. In 2004 it was made into the Grammy Hall of Fame.