Music Videos

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What's your opinion on them? I rarely watch Music Videos, unless it's a totally live shot video of the band performing, unedited, or playing and interacting with each other. I think most music videos aren't interesting, and take away from the music. I do however prefer some fan made videos, but still it's rare for me to like them. I miss the days a lot of music wasn't about the video, and it was just the music.

I too dislike music videos most people would consider 'good', and like videos other people wouldn't like. With the exception of few, I dislike a sense of drama in vids, vids based on a concept, etc. I like vids that are so simple that you can catch 'real' glimpses of the band's personalities.

I'd say I'm indifferent to them. I don't watch them all that often but I don't think it takes away from the music either.

There's VERY few that I enjoy. The ones I like are usually either live concert footage, humorous/comedy ones (think Wierd Al lol), or ones that effectively expand upon the thematic elements presented in the music. It may sound like that last one would be pretty common, but the limiting word is "effectively"

I actually like a lot of music videos, especially the ones by Kate Bush. 'Breathing' is an amazing video and Kate Bush is in a bubble pretending to be a foetus. Foster the People do really good videos too.
Most videos I have seen are pretty dodgy though. I like the idea of music videos but people don't usually make very good ones unless you are someone like Kate Bush who just does everything amazing.

I think when an artist uses the video to make a statement about something then it is good. But I think on the whole most videos are just excuses to show themselves off.

I totally agree with you, Robdemanc, and pretty much everyone above me. Music videos can be dynamic, fun, meant to show a useful or in fact very concerning message, creative, some all rolled into one. But so many of them just love to take a ton of kids they pay to show at a concert or just in the music video, or the band will play against a white background, or if it's a solo artist they'll be doing whatever typical thing matches the mood of the song, like on a bus or some controversial crap or just simply walking down a street.

As a matter of fact, wouldn't it be interesting if there were a show that took amateur artists and narrowed down their videos to the most breakthrough one of that episode and had live voting by people watching the show according to how the judges themselves had the following properties of originality were, and liking the artist simply wasn't an option? Now that would be cool.

I think some examples of good use of music video are:

Soul Asylum - Runaway Train
Frankie goes to Hollywood - Two Tribes
Bjork - Human Behaviour

They use the medium to say something.

I like music videos, not all of them, but I like a lot of them like, Glee videos. I like them when they look cool, so to speak. Nocturnal Rite's never again looks great.

I think some music videos can make a song interesting, but I generally don't like watching Music Videos unless its from my favourite bands.

I find them to be a waste of time, because when im listening to music I tend to be doing other things and can't watch 3 things at once very well.

a good lyric I caught off of a rapper awhile back is "Now you need a circus act just to sell your album".. I think music videos and the live shows artists have nowadays, that is the circus act they speak of.

That's a pretty good point.
Although, as I really do like her, I will have to mention the subject of Kate Bush again. Sorry if it is irritating, me talking about her - I've been told it is. Anyway, she is a big fan of the music video, and has said in interviews that she is fascinated by the idea of film accompanying her music, and views it as a further form of self-expression that is very important to her. Kate Bush is often depicted in her music videos, however, since directing her first music video (which was to accompany 'This Woman's Work' from the 1989 album The Sensual World), she has gradually retreated into the sidelines. Director's Cut, which was released on the sixteenth of May 2011, had one single on it, which was her reworked version of 'Deeper Understanding' which first appeared on the aforementioned album, The Sensual World. In the video for 'Deeper Understanding', and for the later animated videos accompanying 50 Words For Snow (which came out on December 21st - it was very exciting having TWO Kate Bush albums in a single year!) Kate Bush does not appear, staying behind the scenes directing the videos. The point of this was to point out that Kate Bush isn't motivated by commercial success, or 'selling her albums'. She neither performs live shows nor appears in her videos any longer. It is obvious to see she is more interested in her music as an art-form rather than something that has to be sold and earned her money - someone interested in commercial success would not release 'Deeper Understanding' as a single (it being six and half minutes long consisting of only about two minutes of main vocals), and would even less release the album 50 Words for Snow, which is not only a very different album from all of Kate Bush's album, but consists of rather long songs, several of which exceed ten minutes in length.

I'm so sorry for the length of this comment! The point of saying all that was merely to say that, since Kate Bush obviously doesn't apply when you talk about making a circus act to sell an album (unless you count her earlier years and the Tour of Life - but even then, Kate Bush was more motivated by her own creative expression and doing what she wanted to do to find happiness, and etc.), so i am sure there are many musical artists who have similar views as her! It just seems silly to me to make such big generalisations about people like this. I think it all depends on the individual artist or band. I'm sure not everyone is motivated merely by profit and sales - though it is obvious quite a few are. In the end everything comes down to the individual and I don't think deductive reasoning works in this case. Still, I guess all this doesn't really have any bearing on whether or not the idea of a music video is good. It does, however, speak of the integrity of some videos! (Having a very limited scope of music I listen to, I am unable to give more examples as to what artists or bands are exempt for the idea of circuses to sell albums).

Kate Bush is good. I liked her on the video to Rubberband Girl where she is dancing in a straight jacket. Cloudbusting is a good video too.

I actually kind of want to go to my formal this year in a straitjacket so I can undo the straps and dance like that.

99% of the time I find the videos to be completely uninteresting. The exceptions for me are, as the first poster said, the band playing the song live and its a good performance, or something that's visually interesting and different than everything else. for some reason New Order always seemed to make videos that I liked - Perfect Kiss, True Faith, World and Confusion were my favorites.