When I was growing up, I was addicted to MTV and VH1. I just loved watching music videos. And I can still remember a lot of them to this day; Freddie Mercury doing the hoovering in I Want To Break Free; Madonna as Marilyn Monroe in Vogue; school girl Britney Spears; NSYNC on puppet strings; the Backstreet Boys as werewolves, zombies and vampires.
But then, sometime around the late 2000s, music videos all but disappeared from my consciousness. It was at this time that Spotify first launched, completely revolutionising the way that we listen to music. Suddenly, no one was watching the music channels anymore. They were relegated to an afterthought, rather than an additional avenue of expression. No doubt the concurrent rise of social media had something to do with it, with artists instead telling their story and connecting with fans via Twitter and Instagram, rather than MTV.
But, very happily, after a decade or so of music streaming killing the music video star, it seems that they’re back with a vengeance. Exhibit A: siren songstress of the moment, Sabrina Carpenter, who teased her latest video for single Please, Please, Please with a trailer on Instagram, and even used it to “hard launch” her new boyfriend, the Saltburn actor Barry Keoghan. Uploaded 11 days ago, it has already had nearly 27 million views on YouTube, no doubt in large part due to her co-star.
Keoghan and Carpenter at the 2024 Met Gala
The video (watch above) sees the duo playing a couple who meet in prison, with Carpenter as a modern gangster’s moll, and Keoghan her bad-boy lover. And while there has been plenty of chatter online about their relationship, there have been just as many column inches dedicated to Carpenter’s wardrobe, which she worked on with stylist Ronnie Hart.
“It was a modern interpretation of Bonnie and Clyde, a rough thug-mobster type and a fashion-forward femme fatale,” Hart explains. “The looks were all rooted in that sort of cinematic world, and what would be the most dynamic and memorable colours, silhouettes, and styles to play with for each scene.” The resulting looks included an Alexandre Vauthier bubblegum-pink fur coat, worn by Carpenter as she springs Keoghan out of jail, a red bustier mini-dress by Dilara Findikoglu as she stands on the sidelines of a bar fight, and a hooded blue Alaïa dress worn for a prison visit.
For Carpenter and Hart, the fashion was just as important as the music. “Music and fashion really do go hand in hand – they join forces to create this visual language that makes a song even more meaningful or a dress more emotionally charged,” explains Hart. “I think music videos are super important to any artist trying to illustrate the world that their lyrics live in, and the visual identity they hope to convey to their audience. Media is so fleeting in today’s world; creating a music video that has staying power is such a useful tool in an artist’s mission to reach their audience. Sabrina especially loves to have a point of view with her music videos that make for a very fun, potent, visual impact.”
Of course, Carpenter also knew she was creating a viral moment by casting her boyfriend in the video. After all, Hollywood cameos have long been a tried-and-tested way of making a music video memorable long after the song is out of the top 100. Remember Christopher Walken dancing in Fat Boy Slim’s Weapon of Choice? Or even Ben Affleck's starring role in JLo’s Jenny from the Block?
Another pop princess of the moment, Ariana Grande, has also been recruiting A-list stars to feature in the music videos for her new album, Eternal Sunshine. The singer has worked alongside director Christian Breslauer on her last three videos, producing what he has dubbed mini-movies. “Ariana is extremely passionate about every detail,” he shares. “Her trust in my vision is one of the greatest things I've been able to experience as an artist.” As two cinephiles (Ariana’s album title is a nod to her love of film), it’s unsurprising that the last two videos have riffed on famous movie plots.
The video for We Can’t Be Friends pays homage to the 2004 hit, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, with Grande and actor Evan Peters taking on the roles originally played by Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey, as a couple seeking to erase each other’s memories of their relationship.
The album’s second single, The Boy Is Mine, sees Grande as Catwoman swooning over You’s Penn Badgley, who plays the mayor of a Gotham-like city. “With The Boy Is Mine, I said we should get Penn Badgley from You and flip the script where you are the obsessed one,” shares Breslauer. “She then added that she would love to play some type of villain character that has some sex appeal. Once we had the core idea we pitched it to Penn and the rest is history. We honestly had the best time making it.” Shot in a wider angle than usual for YouTube, it feels particularly cinematic, and even features two minutes of pre-amble before the music kicks in.
While historically, music videos were created so that fans could hear their favourite music while watching television, today, it’s another way for artists to connect with their audiences, and to offer something extra for die-hard fans, usually in the vein of callbacks. TikTok sleuths were quick to link Carpenter’s Espresso and Please, Please, Please videos, for example, while finding the Easter Eggs in a Taylor Swift video is something of a hobby for Swifties.
Indeed, the latter even put out a press release to accompany the video for the first single off her new album, Fortnight, featuring Post Malone, highlighting just how much thought had gone into it. “I wanted to show you the worlds I saw in my head that served as the backdrop for making this music,” she said. “Pretty much everything in it is a metaphor or a reference to one corner of the album or another. For me, this video turned out to be the perfect visual representation of this record and the stories I tell in it.”
With social media teasers and countdowns, major fashion moments, Hollywood cameos, high production values and killer plot lines, we are truly in a new golden age of music videos. Long may it continue.
