Contemporary music videos are merely, elaborate advert, with little artistic or moral integrity.

Contemporary music videos are merely, elaborate advert, with little artistic or moral integrity.

In today’s time of music it has generally as a whole lost its roots in terms of what making music is all about but not entirely as there are still artist who make music for the music him or her. The general consensus is that artist only main interest is to make money are influenced by what their record labels want rather than focus on making great music.

There are music videos, which do merely focus on the artist image rather than the song themselves. When there are things like product placement or the artist music video have a consistent theme to it, its fair to say that they’ve lost there ways when it comes to music.

Andrew Goodwin made a point about voyeurism and how it often plays a major part especially in enticing a male audience interest in the artist and the song.

In this example Nicki Minaj music video for her song "Anaconda" there are multiple shots and angles of Nicki Minaj and her fellow back up dancers not showing her face but focusing more on physical attributes like her derriere and her chest which makes her a sexual object and conveys her sexual qualities. This is an example a music video that has more emphasis on the star image than the song itself.

Richard Dyer is another theorist who agrees that stars are fundamentally to make money. The music institution the models the stars image around the target audience.

 

This is an example of how as time change so does the artist in terms of what people are listening to and they use that to model the artist. Just like in todays age you won’t see Westlife being as big a success today, vice versa.

However there are artist whose music videos truly reflect the meaning of the artist whilst also upholding there artistic and morale integrity.  Andrew Goodwin explains what the music video represents for the viewer.

This is categorized in 3 steps:

1.) Analysis of the music lyrics.

2.) Main voice in song - The voice would be unique and give the artist a unique identity.

3.) There's a story within a song - The music video is created to emphasize the lyrics and the narrative of the song.

Ed Sheeran gives a great example of when the voice of the artist is unique and can be recognizes for the quality as explained by Goodwin. 

Iggy Azalea helps explain Goodwin's example of a story within the lyrics and the use of music video helps emphasize her rise to fame from nothing.

He also explains how the use of music video is still used in todays age for artist to truly illustrate the meaning of the lyrics of the song.

Christina Perri music video to her song "Jar of Hearts" looks at her recalling an ex-boyfriend who wanted to reconnect after a tough breakup. which is exemplified in the music video 

So overall contemporary music have both lost it ways in terms of making the artist something they could sell to make money but however as shown there are still artist that still make artist videos to go with their music.