Andrew Goodwin's Key Features of Music Videos

When analysing a music video Andrew Goodwin suggests that there are six key features in music videos which are very rarely broken. The first key feature is that they have genre characteristics, such as in rock genre songs there is normally a band on stage or in boy bands or girls bands there is normally a dance routine. His second key feature is that the lyrics normally have a relationship with the visuals, for example 50 Cent's song 'In Da Club' is filmed in the club and he refers to fast cars and women and he is surrounded by women and money. This also accounts for the third key feature where he says that the music has a relationship with the visuals, so if it is quite a happy song there is quite a lot of bright colours and quite a happy narrative then the music will represent this.

The fourth feature is that the music label normally make sure that there are a lot of close ups so that they can promote the band or artist and also the artists will generally develop motifs to create a visual style of the artist or band. For example, in most of Tinchy Stryders videos he always has "Star In The Hood" labelled on his T-Shirts or hoodies. The fifth key feature is the use of voyeuristic images to help a certain character in music video to stand out in a certain way. The last key feature that Goodwin described was the use of intertextual reference from other sources of media such as movies, TV programmes and other music videos themselves.