When you listen to music, what runs through your mind? When listening to “Night on Bald Mountain” by Modest Mussorgsky, do you envision Disney’s Fantasia, with the giant demon Chernabog raising ghosts and monsters to resurrect as demons for his personal enjoyment? Does the chorus for the Flock of Seagulls’ song “I Ran (So Far Away)” send you on a visual odyssey of spinning mirrors, aluminum foil and men with rather unique haircuts?
Yeah, me too. And that is the problem.
In an age where the visual medium is the dominant form of entertainment, music has taken a backseat. It is swiftly becoming the accompaniment for videos and movies, rather than standing on its own as a vibrant and personal form of communication.
Think about it for a moment. For the ‘mainstream’ pop and rock radio stations, which songs become hits? The songs with the eye-catching music videos, of course. How do we determine who is to be our next musical idol? The artist’s appearance seems to come first, and then we worry about the musical talent. An artist like Susan Boyle could stun the world with her musical artistry, if given the chance. However, with a homely appearance, how often would that artist get the opportunity?
Whatever happened to just listening to a song and forming your own story? Music has the advantage of being a storytelling medium where each person could have a different viewpoint each time a song is heard. The listener is able to interject his or her own emotion into the music, allowing the simple arraignment of chords and harmonies to become a reflection of one’s own self, a reflection that is dynamic because we ourselves are ever changing. Once a video representation is set to music, that reflection becomes static. It will never be as personally significant as what it could be again.
A music video is forcing the viewer to accept an outside view. Essentially, a video is saying “Never mind what you might think you feel. This is how you should feel.” It removes the intimate emotional reaction the audience may have to the music and replaces it with a manufactured response purposely designed by a third party. This may be good for mostly visual mediums such as films, but for music as a stand-alone art form, it stunts the audience’s imagination.
As the world becomes more visual, there will be no escaping from the music video…and that is fine. I just prefer to take my music straight as it is, without any preconceived notions to color my perceptions.
