Different Categories of Music Videos

Narrative, Performance and Concept

Narrative.

Narrative based music videos are ones that follow a storyline that tends to continue throughout the whole video. These tend to be more for indie or pop genres. There are many famous narrative music videos as these are usually

the ones which can get the strongest message across. One of the best I have seen is the video for ‘All I Want’ by Kodaline. This video focuses on a guy who

was born with a different looking face to everybody else. It shows him in different situations, whether its at his house with his dog, or in his office, where he is bullied by his male colleagues because of the way he looks.

However it mainly focuses on his love for a girl he works with, and how in the end he manages to win her over, despite the way he looks. It is an extremely

moving video with a strong message behind it, and because the band got such a good reaction they went on to make a second part to the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtf7hC17IBM

Performance.

Performance based music videos are ones that mainly show the band/artist performing the actual song. These videos are normally made for rock/ heavy metal music, although they are sometimes

used for pop music as well. One of my favourite performance videos is the video for ‘You Only Live Once’ by The Strokes. This video is

effective as sometimes performance videos are not very interesting as you are mainly watching the artist/band sing however they add in different elements to make it interesting, such as making the room

they are performing in fill up with oil.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT68FS3YbQ4

Concept.

Concept based music videos are ones that usually are quite random as they don't really follow a storyline and tend to have nothing to do with the song itself. They can be based around a single idea and can be quite unusual. There is no

particular genre of music that tends to make concept videos, any artist can create one. A good example of a concept video

is ‘Sledgehammer’ by Peter Gabriel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJWJE0x7T4Q