Beyoncé is wrong - music videos are still essential
They’re an art form for crying out loud!
Last week Beyoncé did an interview - something of a rare treat these days - with GQ. In it, she was asked about the absence of music videos for her Renaissance and Cowboy Carter eras. Her response? Odd.
She said it was “important” to focus on the music rather than the usually accompanying clips. “The music needed space to breathe. Sometimes a visual can be a distraction from the quality of the voice and the music.”
She added that fans and the film she released following her latest tour “became the visual.” This would all be fine if it didn’t completely contradict pretty much everything she’d said and done in her three-decade career.
Music videos are, in my opinion, one of the most important ways for artists to promote themselves and connect with fans. They also get people talking, look at Madonna’s Like a Prayer in 1989, All the Things She Said by t.A.T.u in 2002, Wrecking Ball by Miley Cyrus in 2013, and more recently Sabrina Carpenter’s Feather.
The visual aspect of music has been around for decades and though there were ones before Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody in 1975, the ‘promotional video’ was made for Top of the Pops as the band was on tour and couldn’t appear, and they didn’t want to mime either. Why would you when you have a voice like Freddie Mercury on lead vocals?
Brian May later recalled: ”We weren’t too keen on going on Top of the Pops and standing on those little podiums and kind of miming Bohemian Rhapsody. It would have been really crap.”
And thus, the music video as we know it was born. Eight years later in 1983, Michael Jackson revolutionised it further when he released the 13-minute short film for Thriller.
Jackson’s hit was referenced by Queen Bey in her four-part YouTube documentary for her self-titled ‘visual album’ in 2013.
“I feel like people experience music differently,” she said, “I remember seeing Thriller on TV with my family. It was an event… I’m so lucky I was born around that time.”
I agree with her. Music videos to me are integral memories. Though most of the clips I remember heavily sexualising women (that’s a whole other piece in itself) I will never forget being absolutely obsessed with certain ones. Umbrella by Rihanna, Hey Ya! by OutKast, Toxic by Britney Spears - the list goes on!
Lady Gaga, who’s collaborated with Beyoncé twice now, said after she released her debut single Just Dance she felt pop music had “lost” the visual element. “I’m hoping that they’ll take notice of the interactive, multimedia nature of what I’m trying to do,” she told MTV.
She later doubled down when her song with Beyoncé, Telephone, premiered in 2010. Gaga told Kiss FM: ”When I was younger, I was always excited when there was a big giant event happening in pop music, and that’s what I wanted this to be.” It was, Gaga, it was!
MTV was launched in the 80s (1981 in the US and 1987 in the UK) and there was a boom of videos to accompany songs. But in the UK we now have just four MTV-owned ones.
Most of the channels broadcast until recently were Channel 4-owned. A spokesperson told RXTV: “They are no longer of sufficient scale to deliver meaningful return on investment.”
This shows that we are moving away from traditional means of what might be considered “visual” with the rise of TikTok and Instagram Reels (and YouTube, which is somehow holding on).
But then, how are music videos still creating such a buzz? In 2019, everyone and their mum was talking about Ariana Grande’s video for Thank U, Next after it referenced beloved chick flicks and gave us a narrative. The same happened with Lil Nas X in 2021 when he released his prison-themed music video for Industry Baby with Jack Harlow and it divided social media. Then more recently, Sabrina Carpenter released the visual for her latest single Taste.
It featured Wednesday star Jenna Ortega and revolved around the two of them trying to kill the other after they found out they were seeing the same man. I loved it and so did many others, with the horror movie references and their unexpected kiss.
Though opinions can change, Beyoncé added in the aforementioned documentary she “saw music [and] it’s more than just what I hear” and wanted people to “hear the songs with the story.”
This album and belief was followed three years later by her concept album and magnum opus, Lemonade, with the music videos helping to demonstrate the five stages of grief after her husband Jay-Z cheated with an unnamed woman.
For how passionate she seems about her craft I don’t think what she said in the GQ interview is entirely true. I’m more believing of what author and journalist Jason Okundaye suggested on Twitter: “Either some kind of legal issue, creative indecision or dissatisfaction, whatever [happened].”
He also added that it’s “insulting intelligence” to say videos were never released - despite there being evidence of some sort of visuals being filmed - because she wanted fans to enjoy the music on its own.
However, something has to be said for TikTok dances. Though dance moves have long been associated with certain songs, with Beyoncé even creating a now iconic routine herself for the Single Ladies video in 2009, TikTok ones could become a new and more common visual.
During the pandemic, many creators rose to prominence by doing dances created on the platform such as Addison Rae, and I don’t think it’s going to slow down.
Just this year, Charli xcx’s Apple went viral with an accompanied dance that she embraced and performed, and Megan Thee Stallion did the same with her single Mamushi.
Lyric videos have also become very popular again. They were all the rage on YouTube over a decade ago and have come back with a vengeance on TikTok (and now are usually uploaded with a sped up version of a song). While I think though they’re fine, it has allowed artists and their labels to get lazy.
I can’t tell you how many I saw them as channels started to die out. It was either lyrics, a single image, or a looped video like an Instagram Boomerang - horrendous!
The rising use of streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music is also a reason for the dwindling ‘need’ for accompanying clips. But that might be changing as users have access to not just songs but music videos now. You can watch them from an array of artists which to me signifies some sort of hope.
While we may be moving away from traditional ways of viewing music videos, I think Beyoncé is wrong and that they are just as important as they were five or six years ago. Record labels and artists should recognise that, actually, a good music video can elevate a good song even if it’s being streamed on our phones and laptops and not our TV screens.
Current song obsession: The Love Club by Lorde