Watching pop phenomenon Sabrina Carpenter and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice actor Jenna Ortega devise ever-more violent ways to murder each other in a parody of 1992 film Death Becomes Her might not be everyone’s cup of tea. Nor might watching Bishop’s Stortford’s Brat superstar Charli XCX and Billie Eilish climb to the summit of a 20-foot-high pile of knickers. Meanwhile, the sight of singer Katy Perry clinging to the side of a helicopter as a bikini-clad cyborg may leave some viewers scratching their heads.
But all three scenarios became huge talking points in recent months thanks to the return of the blockbuster music video. The format’s renaissance – helped by the aforementioned videos for Taste , Guess and Women’s World respectively – has been quite stunning. Music videos seemed to almost disappear somewhere between the decline of linear television music programmes such as Top of the Pops in the mid-Noughties and the mainstream adoption of smartphones in the early 2010s.
The growth of YouTube heralded the first wave of the current revival, with videos for songs like Ed Sheeran’s 2017 hit Shape of You and Dua Lipa’s 2017 hit New Rules garnering 6.3 billion and three billion views respectively. But pop fans’ recent ballooning use of so-called “short-form” video-sharing apps such as TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat has given the format a new boost.
And it has coincided with a new appreciation for cinematic, expensive, agenda-setting, full-length music videos.
