Andrew Goodwin's Theory

In Andrew Goodwin's theory, it states there are 5 key aspects in a music video:

• Thought beats (seeing the sound)
• Relationship of visuals to the song
• Narrative and performance 
• Technical aspects of the video
• The Star image (making the artist centre of attention)

This can be demonstrated through the music video 'Gold Digger' by Kanye West:

The Star Image - In the music video Kanye West is the centre of attention majority of the time.

Relationship of Visuals to the Song - In the song the lyrics 'baby by busta' are said and this is then directly related to the image in the video.

Again, this screenshot shows the relationship of visuals to the song, as in the song it says 'I know somebody paying child support for one of his kids' and this is directly related to the visual of the kid.







Andrew Goodwin also agrees with Laura Mulvey's theory of The Gaze. He talks about the voyeuristic treatment which shows that by filming certain features of men and women in a sexual way, it creates an interest and attraction to the viewers.




The voyeuristic treatment can be shown here as close ups of this women is irrelevant but creates attention to the male viewers.

Laura Mulvey - The Male Gaze Theory

The concept of the gaze is one that deals with how the audience views the people represented in the video. This theory consists of three different gazes:

• That of the person behind the camera.
• That of the characters within the video itself.
• The gaze of the viewer.

A music video which uses this theory is 'Blurred Lines' by Robin Thicke.

Throughout this music video the women are portrayed as objects rather than people and are arguably the main focus of the video due to their revealing outfits and their bodies.

Having girls such as these creates a talking point to viewers, both male and female, as male viewers talk about the girls and their attractiveness, and the female viewers talk about sexism and even though it may give the video a bad image, it creates an awareness and makes the video even more popular on YouTube and social media. 

The screenshots I took below demonstrate how the women are portrayed throughout the video:

Great Music Videos - Shake It Off

Shake It Off by Taylor Swift has become a massive hit with over 1 billion views as it creates so many hot talking points within the video to appeal to a wide audience. It includes several different genres of dance styles, such as Jazz, Hip Hop, Ballet and Cheerleader, which again appeals to a wide audience as fans of these genres will be interested in this video.

Taylor Swift performing her song demonstrating ballet.

 She then begins to perform her song whilst demonstrating Hip Hop.

 Here Taylor Swift is imitating Lady Gaga from one of her music videos.

Taylor Swift performing to Jazz.

Here Taylor Swift recreates the scene from Nicki Minaj's Anaconda.

This creates a talking point for social media and gives fans of Nicki Minaj reason to watch the video.

Here Taylor is dancing in the form of Cheerleader.









Taylor Swift performs all theses different genres of music and imitates all these different artists to create an interest with the artists fan base whom she is imitating. Some people would argue she is taking the mick out of the artists that she is imitating, however this is a clever way to create a hot talking point around the Shake It Off music video, which then allows the videos publicity to increase.

Great Music Videos - Rap God

Rap God by Eminem is one of my favourite music videos as it parodies several famous TV shows, films and characters such as Max Headroom, The Matrix, The Walking Dead, Pong and Super Mario Bros. This creates an interest for fans of these shows and characters which then gives more reason for people to want to watch the video, even if they are not fans of Eminem or the music genre. It also becomes a talking point and begins to trend on social media which is a massive platform to advertise the video on. This is one of the reasons 'Rap God' has received 235 million views on YouTube and is such a success.

Here Eminem parodies Max Headroom. We can see he has modernised the recreation to appeal to a younger generation.

Eminem then begins to parody The Matrix and again modify it to add his own twist to the recreation.

Here we can see a cameo of the game Pong.

And then a cameo of the game Super Mario Bros. This appeals to a younger generation who played or remembers playing these retro games.

He then includes footage from The Walking Dead which has recently become a hit TV show which therefore creates an interest to a wide audience of people.

Finally we can see Eminem cleverly imitating the game Portal.

Rock Music Videos

U2 - Song For Someone















Aerosmith - Crazy















Linkin Park - Numb











These three rock music videos share the same characteristics as each other as they are all part of the rock music genre. The generic conventions of the rock music genre are that the videos are narrative based and show cameos of the artists within the video. The videos follow Andrew Goodwin's theory of demonstrating genre characteristics as the artists and actors dress in a 'rock' fashion to display the music genre.

Hip Hop Music Videos

Eminem - Rap God

Kid Cudi - Day 'n' Night

Jay-Z - 99 Problems












These three videos are by big Hip Hop artists, Jay Z, Kid Cudi and Eminem. These videos relate to each other and show generic conventions of the Hip Hop genre as in all videos it features the artist of the song. This is because it follows Andrew Goodwin's theory of 'The Star' in which the artist is shown as the main viewing point. Also as these artists are very big and popular, they have a very large fan base and audience that want to see them in their own video performing to their own song.

Alternative Music Videos

The Killers - Read My Mind
















Coldplay - Yellow














Arctic Monkeys - R U Mine?














The Killers, Coldplay and Arctic Monkeys are all big alternative music artists. Alternative music videos tend to be performance based focusing on the artist or lead singer of the band. There is no storyline to the video in itself however the music may be based around a situation that has occurred in the artists life.
The music video creates interest to viewers as they want to see the artists performing their own song, and the clever use of camera techniques keeps the video entertaining.