comparison of music videos

Madonna videos

Madonna is famous for her high budget videos to promote her music, and there are common themes that run throughout her work.

Firstly she always plays a central role in her videos. She is portrayed as sexy and beautiful, and performs technically challenging dance roles in many of her videos.  She makes reference to Hollywood stars such as Marilyn Monroe in several of her videos, for example Vogue and Material Girl. In Hung Up she pays tribute to the dancing of John Travolta. She is prepared to address quite profound issues in her videos such as inter-racial love stories in Like A Prayer and Borderline. Again in American Life she includes powerful images of war and violence.  Many of her videos are quite sexually explicit, and this can be seen in Like A virgin and Justify My Love. Again in Vogue the costumes are very revealing. While many of her videos are bright and colourful she has also explored the medium of black and white, as in Secret.

Jay Z videos

Jay Z is a very successful rap artist who has featured some very memorable videos.  His videos include many characteristics of the genre of hip-hop.

Many show shots of urban lifestyle and present scenes of the city. Examples include Dirt Off Your Shoulder, Lost One and 99 Problems. Much of Jay Z’s music centres on problems in the urban cities and he uses his videos to portray this. He includes city scenes in Dirt Off Your Shoulder and Lost One. Wealth, expensive cars and flashy jewellery, another characteristic of the genre, is obvious in many of his videos. In Blue Magic he is shown flashing 500 Euro notes. In Picasso Baby he is shown to be aspiring to wealth, art, champagne, and the finer things of life. Also in Roc Boys he is shown surrounded by money and alcohol. In Money Ain’t A Thing there are expensive racing cars.   There are lots of close ups of JayZ such as in Anything.

Voyeurism is a recurrent theme. The videos are full of half-naked, beautiful women for example I Just Wanna Love You. Here there are recurrent themes of clubs and dancing. He often uses black and white or very colourless scenes such as in On The Run and Jigga What Jigga Who. Again in Lost Ones there are dark scenes. He often works with other artists and often has guest rappers on his videos. Other people have included Eminem, DJKhaled and his wife Beyoncé.

Bon Jovi Videos

Bon Jovi is an American rock band from New Jersey. Their videos tend to be performance based which is stereotypical of the rock genre. There are numerous close up shots of the band performing in various venues, for instance in Let It Rock and Born To Be My Baby. There are also many shots of the band with their instruments such as in I Believe. The clothes of the band throughout all the videos are again stereotypical of a rock band. They wear jeans or leather trousers, tight fitting tops showing bare arms and chests. They wear jewellery and have ear piercings. They have the traditional long hair of a rock star. There are often scenes of people in the crowds at their concerts mouthing the lyrics with the band, for example in Who Says You Can’t Go Home. The crowds are constantly facing Bon Jovi, involved in the concert. The record label demands a lot of close ups of the band and this is seen in all the videos. Example would be You Give Love A Bad Name and Have A Nice Day. There is a definite relationship between the music and the visual, for the videos constantly move at a fast pace as does the music. There is a lot of use of darker scenes and dark lighting, for instance in Livin On A Prayer. Often black and white effects are used as in Wanted Dead Or Alive.