Why I think the art of the music video is underappreciated today
I have long believed that music video artistry is routinely taken for granted. The songs I remember most vividly often contain a colour, a location or a movement that the audio alone could not have supplied. A video can preserve the atmosphere of a record and give me a second route into it.
Because videos are still called promotional clips, as if a director simply illustrated a finished song, their creative weight remains hidden. The label obscures the choreography, visual rhythm, symbolism and performance decisions that can turn three minutes of audio into a distinct piece of cultural work.
Songs remembered in images
A music video lives in the space between memory and imagination. When a song plays in a shop or on radio, I can picture its video without pressing play. A dancer in white, a rain-soaked street or a room changing colour becomes an internal cue attached to the chorus.
That attachment is not incidental. The best clips condense an emotional idea into visual shorthand, then reward repeated viewing with details missed the first time. I still think of Radiohead’s “Street Spirit” through its restless black-and-white snow and Daft Punk’s “Around the World” through Michel Gondry’s homemade-looking rooms.
Streaming has multiplied the images available to us, yet it can also flatten them. Vertical feeds and autoplay encourage a flash of recognition rather than sustained attention. The video may be everywhere, while its artistry is treated as background.
Directing under a very different clock
Calling a music video a promotional clip understates the directing involved. Framing, lighting, production design, costume, editing, colour and movement all shape how a listener receives the song. The performer may be the nominal subject, but the image is carefully constructed around that voice.
Chris Cunningham’s “Come to Daddy” treats sampled bodies as digital sculpture, while Gondry turns repetition into visual humour. Flume’s “Cause of Death,” directed by Paco Le Tao, expands its anxious electronic track into a stark chase through a clinical room. Each choice changes the track’s meaning.
Video directors also work to a stubborn brief: deliver the song, establish a mood, fit a fixed running time and often satisfy a label or sponsor. Within those constraints, a memorable image can clarify the emotional problem of a track without explaining it away.
When pictures argue with the music
Some of my favourite videos create productive friction between sound and image. The song may be bright while the pictures feel uneasy, or the lyrics may become sharper when the setting turns strange. This counterpoint gives listeners something to interpret rather than merely watch.
Smashing Pumpkins’ “Buddy Holly” mixes a lip-synced performance with a gleeful zombie film. The clip can celebrate the song’s energy, mock nostalgia and blur the boundary between performer and character at once. Jonathan Glazer’s “Street Spirit” takes another route, making a radio-friendly melody feel fractured and shadowed.
Tones and I’s “Johnny Run Away,” directed by Marc Lobb, pushes that idea further. Its stylised domestic rupture shows how narrative, casting and editing can make a simple voice-and-guitar song feel urgent and unresolved. The video becomes part of how we understand the song’s subject.
Performance is one element in a larger visual language
Live performance remains one of the video’s strongest attractions. A concert audience can read a singer’s posture, while a camera operator finds vulnerability in a glance and a director gives a chorus a sudden burst of kinetic energy. Musicians such as Beyoncé and FKA twigs understand how quickly movement can become an argument.
That argument extends beyond the star. Locations can carry regional memory; wardrobe can signal identity; extras can turn a solitary song into a community scene. I notice these layers more when a video resists the urge to cut to the face on every beat and lets the wider frame tell us something.
The rise of phone-sized screens has made striking single images more valuable, yet a still frame can erase the transitions that give music videos their rhythm. Editing is not a gap between shots. It is the pulse beneath the song, cutting, pausing and accelerating with the arrangement.
Australian listening habits hide the craft
Australian listening habits make the neglect easier to understand. Commercial radio, Triple J, podcasts and streaming services can all introduce a song, while commuters on trains in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane often meet its video as a brief vertical clip played through earbuds. That setting rewards instant legibility over close observation.
Local production conditions make thoughtful work possible as well. Melbourne’s network of studios, filmmakers and small music venues supports distinctive visual experiments; Sydney and Brisbane’s independent scenes regularly release homemade clips without waiting for a television slot. Gotye’s Melbourne-made “Somebody That I Used to Know” remains a model of a familiar room filmed as a psychological maze.
Australian classification rules under the Classification Act 1993 shape what commercial broadcasters and venues can screen, while online platforms apply separate age gates and monetisation filters. Creators may also prepare clean versions for broadcast or commercial spaces. That legal and commercial machinery can obscure the cut made for the song.
The domestic market offers another clue. The ARIA Awards have recognised video as its own category, and projection events such as Vivid Sydney sit comfortably where music, film and visual art overlap. Those signals matter, yet many listeners still encounter a video as an advertisement for audio rather than an artwork.
Watching with the frame in mind
I have started watching music videos more deliberately: full screen, sound on, no skipping. I ask where the camera stands, when it moves and what the director delays. A useful video often withholds information, so a second viewing reveals construction that the first viewing merely suggested.
It also helps to read the clip in layers. Begin with performance, then notice setting, colour, gesture, editing and the relationship between lyrics and pictures. The same frame can carry a literal story, an emotional contradiction and a visual reference at once, rewarding attention without turning the video into homework.
| Viewing approach | Passing clip | Deliberate viewing |
|---|---|---|
| Main effect | Quick identification and atmosphere | Full sequence and emotional progression |
| Attention | A few seconds, often on a phone | Full frame, sound and repeated details |
| Relationship to the song | Confirms the performer or genre | Tests rhythm, meaning and visual counterpoint |
| Creative layers | Usually overlooked | Setting, colour, editing, symbolism and credits |
| Lasting value | Disposable promotional material | A record of the song’s era and creative choices |
Credits deserve attention too. A writer, photographer, editor or motion designer may have supplied the detail that makes a video memorable, even when only the director receives a prominent mention. Searching those credits can lead to visual experiments and collaborators whose work sits outside the mainstream.
A visual art with its own value
I think the music video is underappreciated because its status has remained tangled with promotion. It accompanies a song, appears in a feed and competes with advertising for attention, so its artistry is easily mistaken for decoration. Yet a great video can preserve a particular version of a track for years.
The practical takeaway is that the image belongs in the act of listening. Notice the framing, editing rhythm and visual counterpoint, then hear the instant when image and song lock together. When those elements click, the clip does more than sell a recording; it becomes a piece of music history with a life of its own.