Andrew Goodwin's theory

Andrew Goodwin puts forward a theory about the structure of music videos. He makes 3 main points. Pop videos are built around songs and often songs do not have traditional narrative structures. Because the pop video uses the singer both as the narrator and as a character. And his last point is that the singer often looks directly into the camera to try and involve the viewer at home. He believes that some videos are autonomous from the music they spring from. Sometimes the video can provide a visual pleasure that encourages repeated viewing which therefore promotes the music. There are 3 types of relations between songs and videos:

Illustration: this is where the video helps to tell the story of the lyrics. So What by Pink is a good example of this because the structure of the video fits with the lyrics.




Amplification: this is where the video introduces new meanings that do not contradict with the lyrics but do add layers of meanings. Pretty Hurts by Beyonce is a good example of this because the video starts to show the problem that girls have in society about being "perfect" and having to do things a certain way to fit in, which is a deeper meaning than you first think when watching the video.




Disjuncture: this is where there is very little connection between the lyric and the video. Can't stop feeling by Franz Ferdinand is a good example of this because the video seems very meaningless as it has nothing to do with the song.




-Rusne