Media Theory Around Music Videos- Andrew Goodwin's Key Features

In decoding and analysing a music video, there are various conventions, genre signifiers and other different features that makes a music video successful. Andrew Goodwin suggests that there are six different key features or rules even, that are rarely broken for a music video to achieve success.

The first key feature is that they have genre characteristics/signifiers, and by this I mean what the audience would expect to find in a specific genre. For example in a love song, you would expect to find a narrative of a relationship, or if it was heavey metal you would expect it to be performanced based and in a concert. The second key feature is that the lyrics have a relationship with the visuals, this means that what is being sung corresponds to what is being shown in the music video. An example of this would be the song "The worlds greatest" by R Kelly, lyrics from the song are "I'm that little bit of hope when my backs against the ropes", the music video is set in a boxing ring, and that consists of ropes and boxers being pushed up against the ropes is something you would see in a match and as you can see there is a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals. Similar to the second key feature, Goodwin suggests the music itself has a relationship with the visuals. So for example if the music was in a major key and sounded positive and happy, you would expect to see bright colours, sunshine, all general signifiers off happiness.

The main purpose of music videos is for record/label companies to promote their artist, the fourth feature is creating a visual style. Generally there will be a lot of close up shots of the band/artist, this gives the audience a closer view of who they are listening to and a better feel for what their opinion is of the artist. The artists will try and develop a motif for example, Westlife always wear suits and this suggests what type of performers they are. Similar to this, the fifth key feature is voyeuristic images, this is a way for the artist to stand out from the crowd and be unique. For example, Lady GaGa, as most of her music videos are very bizzarre but she is well remembered by the audience and is very popular as she is very unique in what she does. The last key feature that Goodwin describes is the intertextual reference, this could be done from different sources of media, such as films, tv programmes etc. An example of this would be "Love Story" by Taylor Swift, where the main narrative is based on Romeo and Juliet the play.