The Complete History of the Music Video: From the 1890s to Today

If you want to under­stand the his­to­ry of music videos, you must con­sid­er a lot of things that are not obvi­ous­ly music videos. The Bug­gles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star,” the first selec­tion of MTV’s inau­gur­al broad­cast, must sure­ly count as a music video — but then, it was pro­duced a cou­ple years ear­li­er for the much dif­fer­ent con­text of the British chart pro­gram Top of the Pops, much like Queen’s pro­to music video for “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” from 1975. But is Bob Dylan’s much-par­o­died card-drop­ping “per­for­mance” of “Sub­ter­ranean Home­sick Blues” from a decade ear­li­er, shot for D. A. Pen­nebak­er’s Dont Look Back, a music video? What about A Hard Day’s Night, the Bea­t­les’ exu­ber­ant­ly nar­ra­tive-light film from the year before?

All of these come up in the new his­to­ry of the music video from YouTube chan­nel Poly­phon­ic above, which com­piles into an over three-hour-long view­ing expe­ri­ence all the episodes of its series on the sub­ject. In its long his­tor­i­cal view, the music video did­n’t begin with the Fab Four, and not even with their epoch-mak­ing appear­ance on The Ed Sul­li­van Show.

One can trace it far­ther back, past Sco­pi­tone film juke­box­es (includ­ed in “the canon of Camp” by Susan Son­tag in her famous essay); past Dis­ney’s Fan­ta­sia (essen­tial­ly eight ani­mat­ed clas­si­cal music videos strung togeth­er); past even The Jazz Singer, the first fea­ture-length musi­cal “talkie,” which in 1927 put a defin­i­tive end to the era of silent film.

Per­haps the ear­li­est iden­ti­fi­able pre­de­ces­sor of the music video is “The Lit­tle Lost Child,” which in 1894 was exhib­it­ed as an “illus­trat­ed song.” Its deliv­ery of a nar­ra­tive through pro­ject­ed still images accom­pa­nied by live piano was like noth­ing its audi­ences had expe­ri­enced before, with an emo­tion­al pow­er greater than the sum of its visu­al and musi­cal parts. This was a brand new tech­nol­o­gy, and indeed, like any cul­tur­al his­to­ry, that of the music video is also a tech­no­log­i­cal his­to­ry, one advanced by film, broad­cast tele­vi­sion, cable tele­vi­sion, and in our time, inter­net stream­ing, which stayed the for­m’s loom­ing prospect of pop-cul­tur­al irrel­e­vance. Now, in the twen­ty-twen­ties, we must ask our­selves this: when Tik­Tok users post them­selves danc­ing, zoom­ing in on pan­cakes, or skate­board­ing while drink­ing Ocean Spray, is it a music video?

Relat­ed con­tent:

The 50 Great­est Music Videos of All Time, Ranked by AV Club

Michel Gondry’s Finest Music Videos for Björk, Radio­head & More: The Last of the Music Video Gods

Watch the First Two Hours of MTV’s Inau­gur­al Broad­cast (August 1, 1981)

David Bowie Releas­es 36 Music Videos of His Clas­sic Songs from the 1970s and 1980s

Jim Jarmusch’s Anti-MTV Music Videos for Talk­ing Heads, Neil Young, Tom Waits & Big Audio Dyna­mite

David Lynch’s Music Videos: Nine Inch Nails, Moby, Chris Isaak & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.