Music has no doubt been a major influence throughout history; it is the universal language and voice of all people and tends to cross all barriers and culture. It has evolved no doubt in a plethora of ways especially in Western Culture. Thus bringing us to the song recorded by ‘The Buggles’. So, did video in fact kill the radio star? The answer would be undoubtedly, yes!
The visual images that a video does for a song when you listen or watch a music video tends to kill the music, especially these days. Videos are huge in the Music Industry however; we all know that most videos don’t match the song. Take for instance Nicki Minaj’s tawdry song ‘Pound the Alarm’, its myriad o’ eurodance accent is out of place under the island sun of Trinidad. It shows her partaking in a carnival, barely clad, with colors and other island sirens in her likeness. What’s baffling is the fact that the song doesn’t quite give the fun in the sun while sipping some fruity drink on the shore vibe.
These days’ music videos are what director’s think the music sounds like visually. So Rihanna’s song ‘Diamonds’, which is a love song, at least we think, is portrayed as a hodge podge of vignettes put together in an artistic approach to purvey emotions. These emotions are meant to build and go up and down taking you on some emotional a journey. You’ll see her floating in the water serenely as one hand is out-stretched at one point and then flashes to another scene as a wild horse is seen running through an open pasture all in the effort to express an emotion only known to the artist or director.
Point is, before the subliminal messages and hidden meanings; videos actually had a meaning now it’s a collage of mostly the same thing. Sex sells so there’s plenty of sex- appeal, a lot of drinking a lot of the same concepts in most music videos even if the song has nothing to do with the video. The State of music has indeed elevated to a very arrogant, egotistical sort of entitlement in attitude. By this I mean there has no doubt been a switch in expression toward the art of music and how it is portrayed, perhaps a sort of ignorance has some how slid in. Not to say that all music is this way however, there is a general coordination or choreography about the image of music in the 21 century. So the question remains again, did video kill the radio star? Quite possibly it could be that if it didn’t kill the star it most definitely took a lot away.