Andrew Goodwin is a tenor who has come up with a theory regarding music videos. In his theory Goodwin explains that most music videos should be complimentary, contradicting or amplified to the lyrics and genre.
Goodwin's theory also describes the way music videos create relationship between the lyrics and visuals. This means that the words that an artist sings have very much something to do with what we see on the screen. An example of such music video would be the 'Lazy Song' by Bruno Mars who dances and makes gestures that correspond to his lyrics; this is seen and heard at 00:50 when the people in monkey masks create a 'castle' when the artist sings ''Cause in my castle I'm the freakin' man".
This is an effective way to empower the words that are coming out of Bruno Mars' mouth because the audience do not have to imagine what he means, instead they can easily follow the lyrics, making the music video more pleasurable to watch for a younger audience.
Also, Goodwin explains that some music videos have a relationship between the music and the visuals, meaning that the music video cuts at the beat. This often makes the music video more fluent and have a better flow which leads to the audience subconciously enjoy the music video much more. One example of this happening is "She Looks So Perfect" by "5 Seconds of Summer" at 00:21.
In this example the loudest thump is the indicator of the shot being cut into the next shot, making the video flow much better, therefore it is more enjoyable for the audience to listen and watch. Without this, the video would seem out of sync and could possibly lead to having less views as the audience would not want to listen to this song more than once.
It has also been stated that close ups in music videos are used for artistic branding, showing celebrity culture, atristic portrayal and implications on looking good. This suggests that music videos use close ups to usually promote the artist in one way or another. For example celebrity culture might be represented by using a close up shot on someone who wears certain type of clothes which will lead to starting a star iconography. Someone who has used close ups to show their implication on looking good, however, is Robbie Williams. It is clear that in his songs this artist tries to brand himself through his looks and culture.
In his song called "Candy" he wears a pink suit to empower the word "Candy" as it is often one of the main connotations of the word. Nevertheless, Robbie Williams dresses smartly to ensure that his brand image is connoting that he is a wealthy, smart and possibly good looking, depending on the audience's preferences. This means that in most of Robbie Williams' music videos the camera quite often closes up on his suit to create artistic branding.
Star iconography is also something that most artists try to create in their music videos; it is something that the audience can recognise an artist by. Unsurprisingly, star iconography is often very overexaggerated in a way to create very clear and rememberable unique selling point, due to the fact that, after all, the artist is trying to sell himself. Different artists use branding, style and brand values to stay recognised by the audience in a unique way.
An artist who has set himself an extremely successful unique selling point is "Marshmello" who in each video represents constantly similar iconogrpahy which is that he is a marsh mellow human. This is unbelievably effective as it creates an enigma of the character, making the audience constantly wonder who the person behind the mask actually is. This is similarly used by Sia, which proves that enigmatic characters have the possibility to be top artists.
Voyeurism is also something that the audience can experience through watching some music videos. It is the idea of watching something that you shouldn't see in the form of nudity, exhibition, an intimate location or even frame within frame, in which the audience feel like they are inside the music video, but they shouldn't.
A music video that is full of different types of voyeurism is "Lonely Together" by Avicii, in which the audience constantly feels like they should not see what they are seeing. For example at 2:53 the actors come in intimate contact with each other when the female is wearing promiscuous clothing. This is often used, and is being effective, because it allows the audience to forget about their reality for a moment which sometimes might be stressful.
Lastly, something that some music videos use is intertextuality. Intertextuality is the reference of one type of media in another type of media; something that could be seen as intertextuality would be referring to a book in a music video.
A clear example of intertextuality in a music video would be Taylor Swift's "Love Story" which could be seen as a modernised version of Romeo and Juliette. This is effective as it might appeal to a wide target audience due to the fact that her fanbase will enjoy the music and the voyeurism within the video, whereas some older audiences might be intreged by the artist modernising one of the most well known love stories.
