Experiencing Music Video: Aesthetics and Cultural Context

by Carol Vernallis

Music videos have ranged from simple tableaux of a band playing its instruments to multimillion dollar, high-concept extravaganzas. Born of a sudden expansion in new broadcast channels, music videos continue to exert an enormous influence on popular music. They help to create an artist's identity, to affect a song's mood, to determine chart the music video has changed our idea of the popular song.

Here at last is a study that treats music video as a distinct multimedia artistic genre, different from film, television, and indeed from the songs they illuminate―and sell. Carol Vernallis describes how verbal, musical, and visual codes combine in music video to create defining representations of race, class, gender, sexuality, and performance. The book explores the complex interactions of narrative, settings, props, costumes, lyrics, and much more. Three chapters contain close analyses of important Madonna's "Cherish," Prince's "Gett Off," and Peter Gabriel's "Mercy St."

Genres: Music, Art, Nonfiction, Film

480 pages, Paperback

First published May 26, 2004

Reviews

[Alexa Schwartz · Rating 3 out of 5]

“music videos create the illusion that one can inhabit a place authentically, with some sort of grace and authority, even in socially unsanctioned ways” (Vernallis 75)

[Debbie Reads]

read for my music video seminar!!! who knew theres so much theory inside a music video. So interesting!

[Sannie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vernallis provides an excellent overview of the theory behind music videos. She goes through the various layers of music video: song text, music, visual level and she also analyzes specific videos (I will admit, I didn't read the analyses because they aren't quite relevant to the work I'm researching for). Although the subject is a bit dry, there is probably no better way to present it and there are plenty of photographs to remind you of what Vernallis is talking about. And even if you have no idea what she's talking about, it's relatively easy nowadays to find the music videos online.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

One amazing thing about this book is that it really changes the way you look at music videos. The best parts have to be the ones in which Vernallis elucidates the differences between a music video and a movie because it makes you realize how many, quite specific, aspects of music videos are taken for granted, from their editing to the lack of a narrative. Some chapters, however, are somewhat dragged out and certain analyses seem superfluous or they rely too heavily on the assumption that the reader is familiar with certain technical terms.