Music videos have changed the way we listen to music, but over the decades through MTV, VH1, Channel O, BET and Trace they have changed which artist we listen to.
Nasty Girl with her Clothes Off
When Destiny’s Child released the song Nasty Girl from their Survivor album singing the lyrics, ‘Nasty put some clothes on I told ya, don’t walk out your house without no clothes I told ya’, I wondered if they had been one hundred percent sure in putting that song out to the world.
The song has an easy dance beat to it and certainly stands out as one of those you can sing to when you stand in front of your mirror using your hairbrush as a microphone. But it’s break, ‘You’s a nasty, trashy, sleazy, classless’, felt like I was standing on a street corner in some neighbourhood getting into a beat down with a ghetto floozy.
Beyoncé’s Sexy Moves
Even though the song hits hard on the trashy girl, just singing those words felt like I was the sleazy, classless girl just because I was mean enough to talk about another woman in that manner even if she was only imaginary. Many years later and I look at Beyoncé with a questioning eye.
She’s a beautiful woman, successful, great business acumen and her music sells into the millions and I can’t help thinking it’s because of the sex appeal she exudes onstage, on the sleeve of her CD, promotional photographs as well as music videos.
I look on admiring her svelte moves and strong voice, but I am drawn too by the sexy monokini and stilettos as she holds onto two alligators on leads. The photograph shot in a lush garden has her beautifully made up, expertly coiffured and her eyes holding promises of sensual fantasies. The question pops into my mind, albeit briefly, who’s the nasty girl now?
The Power of the Music Video
Men love her. She termed the word ‘bootylicious’ and she showed on her video what it means, but I wonder if it wasn’t for the music video would she still sell into the millions? Would the Spice Girls or The Pussycat Dolls with sexually suggestive dance moves and lithe bodies barely adorned in tight latex?
I go on further to ask, has the music video killed music? What is termed music or art is organic and temperamental. It changes to suit the one listening, society, evolution, popular frames of thought, culture and so on. Music, like history, recreates itself and like fashion will sometimes repeat itself. And yet, while we can laud Madonna, whom many see as a musical genius, the truth is her art lies in recreating the way we see her first before we hear her.
The Birth of Music Videos
Music videos have been in existence for decades and from the sixties were used to enhance a song rather than merely market the artist. With the advent of the American channel MTV, a 24-hour music video channel, it became imperative that recording companies produce videos to accompany songs and showcase the artist.
People began to see the music video as an art form where colour, choreography, animation, movement, voice, special effects could be used for maximum advantage and subsequently increase sales.
If a singer could lure you with fantastical promises through visual art, then going out to buy the album meant you were in some way moving one step closer to fulfilling your fantasy. That is because the album that you listened to in the privacy and sanctity of your space brought you closer to an artist who didn’t even know you exist. Marketing directors saw it and still see it this way.
Milli Vanilli is Only Eye Candy
Many argue that music videos market the artist and their work as well as enhance their studio-recorded albums, but that’s not entirely true. Take the pop group Milli Vanilli from the 90s whose hits Blame It On The Rain and Girl You Know It’s True made two, dark, handsome strangers the fantasy of millions of women around the world. We couldn’t believe that these spandex wearing Adonises had everything we had ever wanted in a man and because their eyes smouldered and ‘spoke’ to us we had to get the albums.
Not long after their success, the world learned that Fabrice Morvan and Rob Pilatus were only the eye candy to suck us in, while the real singers (Charles Shaw, John Davis, Brad Howell, and twin sisters Jodie and Linda Rocco) were pushed into the background with no outward acknowledgement from founder, Frank Farian. Farian had brought the two models to lipsync and take part in the videos because he thought the original singers were not marketable enough.
King of Pop Changes the Mode of Music Videos
Michael Jackson’s music video Thriller changed the way promotional videos were produced after 1981. Having spent approximately $500 000 on the video, Michael Jackson set a precedent for what could be achieved visually. It seemed he had opened Pandora’s Box – a world filled with potential for good and evil and we lapped it up.
Madonna seduced us with her breast cones (a Greta Garbo reinvention), changing hairstyles, outrageous outfits and unashamed sexuality. Jennifer Lopez made us fall in love with her curvaceous frame, Latin sexiness and her image of Princess of the
A Fat Singer is not too Sexy 
It didn’t matter that Kelly Price who has a voice to rival Whitney Houston or Mariah Carey was kicked to the proverbial curb. She was fat, her nose was wide and she couldn’t juggle them hips. I look at Arethra Franklin, the only performer who was invited to perform at Barack Obama’s inauguration, who has also been voted by Rolling Stone magazine as the number one singer of all time of the rock era, but who now would be considered fat, unattractive and dismissively unmarketable.
Had she come onto the scene from 1980s, having never established a name for herself in the 1960s onwards, I wonder if the world would have lost ‘a natural resource’ as then Michigan Governor James Blanchard called her in 1985. The same can be said for the likes of Janis Joplin and Mama Cass Elliot.
Susan Boyle Shakes the Music Industry
One can also never forget the drama that followed the rising star of Susan Boyle. When she stood in front of the audience on Idols, people as well as the judges laughed at the frumpy Scottish middle-aged woman.
That is until she sang and people were overcome with emotion. In that instance our derision at those who are not ‘marketable’ (also known as ugly, plain, fat) was reflected back at us. As the audience gave her a standing ovation, it was as if she was laughing at us. But to sell her image, her art, her voice, she was taken to the best make-up artists, stylists, hairdressers, orthodontists and we fell more in love with her, while she suffered at the pressure thrown at her.
I am not saying that the previous decades did not encourage beauty. The truth is we’re visual creatures, but our eyes are only one of our five senses. Have we given so much power to that one sense, when that of hearing is also just as important, more so important for those who don’t have it? Have we really sacrificed music for vanity and, if we have, then we truly have lost one of life’s greatest pleasures?
