GOODWIN'S THEORY

Andrew Goodwin is a theorist in Media Studies who proposed some ideology about what makes a good music video and what is seen commonly in music videos.

Andrew Goodwin's theory has 8 principles:

1. There are links between Lyrics and Visuals

 

This Katy Perry video for Last Friday Night features a lot of connection between lyrics and visuals. At the very beginning of the video Katy Perry sings "There's a stranger in my bed..." and the visuals show her waking up with a topless male (stranger) in her bed.

 

2. There are links between Music and Visuals.

3. There are genre characteristics and generic conventions. These are explained further in my post titled GENERIC CONVENTIONS OF MUSIC VIDEOS.

4. Intertextual references (For example, Fancy by Iggy Azalea ft. Charli XCX has massive intertextual references from the film Clueless.)

5. Notions of looking - The ideology that you are looking into someone else's life. This includes men and women being portrayed seductively and sometimes covers when artists make eye contact with the camera.

6. Voyeurism - People enjoying watching other people. It is a way of selling the artists music through sex appeal. Miley Cyrus again can be used an example of this due to her tendency to appear naked in.

7. Demands of the record label. Record labels may demand that some products are shown in the videos. They may be being paid by artists like Dr Dre who will pay record labels to feature their products in their artists videos. The Beats Pill speaker is commonly featured in Pop and Hip-Hop videos.

8. Performance based, narrative based or concept based music videos. Performance based videos will primarily show the star or actor lip syncing the song and dancing in time with the music whereas narrative based videos will have a storyline with characters and a structure. These two basis' are often mixed for a really successful video.