History of Pop Videos

From the 40's to 60's music videos changed dramatically, evolving through time and influencing music videos today.

(1940's) Bing Crosby - Crosby only perormed on Films and T.V shows. This was the only way for fans to see his music.

Frank Sinatra - Sinatra appeared in T.V specials, radio and was the first artist to perform concerts where fans where screaming.

(1950's) Elvis Presley was one of the early rock and roll artists and he appeared in T.V specials, films (such as Blue Hawaii and Jailhouse rock) and concerts.

However Elvis never left the USA, so films and T.V specials were the only way for fans outside the USA (other than travelling out) could see him perform. Elvis performed Hound Dog on the Milton Berle show which sparked major contraversity. Before this time few performers moved around whilst performing their song and the act of doing so was condsidered crude and explicit for younger viewers. After this everytime elvis performed they would only shoot from the waist up preventing viewers from seeing his 'dancing' as it was considered offensive.

(1960's) At this time American artists dominated the charts and there were few British bands and artists that were well known, until the Beatles 'blew up'. Suddenly they became the biggest band in the world. (Europe, America and Austarlia) They too appeared on films and T.V. At this time Top of The Pops was the biggest show in the world and bands in the charts would perform weekly. They also performed in concerts and were the first to perform in a stadium as before this time, concerts were performed in town halls and cinemas etc. This paved the way for other bands who started perfoming large concerts in stadiums and today places such as the O2 Arena. At the time of their huge success throughout the world in the mid 60's, they were so popular they had requests from all over the world to attend concerts and other events. They also had to constanly feature on Top of the pops. When they perfomed their concerts, it became hard to even hear themselves due to the screaming fans. It also became dangerous because of the increasing amount of hysterical girls, so much so they became fed up of travelling all over the world and created the idea of a dedicated music video. They created dedicated music videos of paper back writer and Rain (which were both filmed in ) and sent the videos to T.V stations all over the world. This allowed fans to apperciate their music with a perfomence, without the screaming fans, and also eased there travelling and high demand as it was a more convinent way of performing their music.