How far do music videos reflect popular culture of the time?

In the music industry there is such strong competition for who will have a number one hit or the most watched music video. This can depend on genre to the lengths that artists go to, to recieve attention. Genre based music channels have a competivness to stand apart from what is typically the average music video.

Music videos have changed from when they started to be made, they were used for a different reason other than to promote an artists or bands image. It was a regular occurance that artists could not appear live and a music video was made to stand in there place instead. An example of this is Bob Dylan's, Subterranian Homesick Blues that consited of a man holding up pieces of paper wth the key words in the song. This was more promotion for the artists song and voice, other than his image. However, music videos began to play a key part in promotion for the artists image and this reflected the culture and most importantly genre that started to become more extremely individual and competitve.
Scopitones

Scopitones are the most prime example of the reflection of music videos, although they were mostly popular in France and the first scopitone was made in France (1960) the popularity spread throughout europe and were played on scopitone jukeboxs in resurants and cafes that could afford them. An example of this is Antoine - Les Elcubrations which was made in France in 1966. This reflected how simple the culture was at the time and how important the music was to the artist. However, the film industry has changed dramatically and scopitones are hardly reconised anymore. Todays culture thrive for attention and the competive industry struggle to get attention by trying to be as individual as possible and break conventions in music videos. The music videos now shown on such music channels as MTV and The Hits would be considered vulgar in the 60s, but are becoming more acceptable to todays generations. More explicit videos are appearing on television and the promotion of an artists image is becoming more important and they have to exceed bounderies to be noticed.

It has become more important for female artists to be beautiful and have a nice figure. The more they undress in a video, the more popular they become with consumers and are considered an amazing talent. Music videos are making this focus on both genders of artists, especially male solo artists that can have a negative effect on the future generations and raise the bar of having the most explicit music videos. An example of both of this is 50 cent featuring Olivia shows the vulagirty of both the genders. The lryics even include 'I'll take you to the candy, I'll let you lick my lollipop' This shows that generally, lyrics influence the content of the music video, especially lyrics of a hip hop genre.