Andrew Goodwin's theory

Goodwin's theory consists of key conventions that you would find in most music videos. All music videos have most certainly got at least one of these conventions if not more than one.


1) The relationship between the lyric and visuals

Goodwin said that when music videos contain this aspect, they are likely to do either of three present in the video: they illustrate, amplify or contradict the lyrics in the song.

Illustrate: it basically just shows/literraly represents, what the singer is actually singing about. For example in Pink's music video for her song "Fun House".

" I dance around this empty house" - You can clearly see the outline of what's supposed to be a house. The pool being the garden, right in front of her the small cupboard and further away a toilet. And obviously "empty" because there are no walls around.

" Pictures framing up the past ; Your taunting smirk behind the glass" - Another pretty obvious explanation. Picture frames showing her and presumably her partner.

 "But now it's full of evil clowns" - Some sort of figure, that looks similar to a clown but in a "evil" more dark way, just like the lyrics say.

"Drag my mattress to the yard" - Again, really obvious representation, she is being dragged on "her" mattress.







Amplify: This is to reeinforce the meaning of the lyrics or make the audience feel more touched by what the song is about. For example, in Avril Lavigne's video "When you're gone" it is not about representing the lyrics literally, but to reeinforce the meaning of missing someone.

"And the clothes you left; They lie on the floor ;And they smell just like you" - he is not actually smelling the clothes here, he is holding them and hugging them and later on he displays his decieced wife's clothes on the bed. This is all about missing a person, therefore this part of the music video's story has its own way to show why you would miss someone.

"When you're gone; The pieces of my heart are missing you!" - She is watching the news about the war where her husband/ partner is serving. She is missing him too, but because of a different situation.





Contradict: This is where the visial completely contradict the lyrics. Such as in this music video by Jessie J, "Price Tag".

 This being a very obvious contradiction, when she sing "I'ts not about the money" she is dancing around and standing in front of a "money tree"

2) Thought beats: seeing the sound

For this Goodwin identified that the editing of a music video often correlated with the beats of the music. So the editing, in relation to the song changes pace too.

A great example is in this video at 0:53 where the video is edited so that those sharp and prominent beats are in time with the music video itself.

(Olly Murs - Heart Skips a Beat ft. Rizzle Kicks)

 

3) Genre-related style and iconography

In this point Goodwin suggest that within a certain genre or artist(s) there is a specific element which is repeated in various music videos as part of their image. This will turn iconic and as a result into a trademark to which the band or artist will be remembered by, sometimes even decades later.

  

For the band "LMFAO", for example, they are mostly known by their bold choices of outfits. Glasses and big chains are one of the main accessories which they include every time and are very known for. Furthermore, another of their "iconography tricks" so to speak, is that they have a robot.. They call it the "Shuffle Bot" and it appears in almost all of their music videos that i have seen so far.

4) The creation of a star image

This point here is, that to reinforce the artist's star image, the music video will include multiple close-ups of the main artist or vocalist. This is one of the most used conventions that enable the artist to show themselves throughout the video in order to being linked back to that song.

In this example we can see Goodwin's point. Although Queen is a band, there are a lot of close ups to show the main vocalist. And thus, for Queens music videos, they all follow this pattern of having a lot of close ups of the main vocalist.

5) Voyeurism

Goodwin's point in Voyeurism focuses more on the female aspect. In music videos females tend to be sexualised in order to attract male audience too. This is achieved with different type of shots (from behind, for example), in order to accentuate the female body.

In this music video we can clearly see that she is ultimately portrayed sexually. Not only her "lack" of clothing contribute to this, but she clearly accentuates her buttocks in this video. Camera shots in this music video make it very obvious that although it might be a longshot at her whole body is showing, our main focus is still certain parts of her body (chest, legs, buttocks).

  

6) Intertextual references

Specially in humorous music Goodwin recognized that some music video reference other media texts directly. This engages the audience and rewards them by being able to understand that certain reference.

However nowadays, intertextual references are quite common since music artists are often involved with the sountrack in films (and occasionally games, which nowadays is becoming more popular), their music videos for that soundtrack often include either subtil references that relate to the film it supported or (in the majority of cases) inclute clips and snippets of scenes of that film.