Next Sunday’s Video Music Awards (VMAs), in LA, could be the pop event of the year — they have become don’t-miss television. Just the nominations last month were enough to spark a Twitter spat between the head of the pop sisterhood, Taylor Swift, and the rapper Nicki Minaj. Swift (whose celebrity-pal-packed, Tarantino-esque mini movie for Bad Blood bagged seven nominations) took offence at Minaj (whose booty-shaking clip for Anaconda got two) suggesting that videos featuring very slim women had been favoured over hers.
Swift’s rival, Katy Perry, waded in, while even the mild-mannered nominees Bruno Mars and Ed Sheeran had a say. Then Miley Cyrus — this year’s VMAs host — gave an interview in which she criticised Bad Blood for glamorising violence. Swift, rumour has it, now fears being ridiculed by Cyrus next Sunday.
These catfights have been fantastic for the awards, which have a racy reputation to protect. At the VMAs in 2009, Kanye West invaded the stage to protest about Swift beating Beyoncé, and in 2013, Cyrus memorably reinvented herself with Robin Thicke and a foam finger. The difference this year is that the debate (so far) has centred on the actual videos: their content, their merit, their popularity. And the reason artists are so eager to air their opinions is that music videos matter more than ever before.
A decade ago, the launch of YouTube revolutionised the role of the pop promo. Whereas previously only artists big enough to be on TV required videos, now every act had the chance to have theirs seen. Yet YouTube’s success hastened the decline of revenues at record labels. As videos became more important, budgets collapsed. In 2005, a new signing could expect £50,000 to be spent on a video. Today, that figure is £5,000.
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Now the tide is turning, albeit led by superstar artists. Bad Blood is one of three pop videos produced this year (along with Rihanna’s Bitch Better Have My Money and Madonna’s celeb-splattered farce Bitch I’m Madonna) with a budget rumoured to be more than $1m. They’re the first to breach that magic mark for three years, since Madonna’s Give Me All Your Luvin’, and they herald the return of the “event” video.
“At last, artists are pushing the boat out again when it comes to their videos,” says David Knight, editorial director of the annual UK Music Video Awards. “For big artists, the blockbuster video is back. But it’s for different reasons than in the old MTV days.
“In the States, YouTube views count towards the charts. And there’s the income from advertising. Each view may only be worth a fraction of a penny, but if you’re Katy Perry or Rihanna, aiming for an absolute minimum of 100m views, that’s still a fair amount of money. If it only covers the cost of the video, it’s worth it to enhance an artist’s brand and get them trending on Twitter. Shake It Off has almost 1bn views on YouTube. Bad Blood is already at half that.”
“In the digital age, having a strong visual identity is crucial,” says James Hackett, director of video at Virgin/EMI. “In MTV’s heyday, there were only a handful of artists who truly mastered video, primarily Michael Jackson and Madonna. Now almost every big artist embraces it brilliantly. It’s not just Americans — Coldplay make incredible videos, as do One Direction — but at the moment, Americans are leading the way.”
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Last month, Kanye West premiered the video for two tracks from his upcoming album at an LA art gallery. The nine-minute live-performance film was directed by the Oscar-winner Steve McQueen. So widely watched are pop videos that film-star cameos are again becoming commonplace: Danny DeVito in One Direction’s Steal My Girl, Tom Hanks in Carly Rae Jepsen’s I Really Like You, Ian McKellen in George Ezra’s Listen to the Man and Mads Mikkelsen in Rihanna’s latest among them.
Yet big names don’t always mean big budgets. The film director Harvey B-Brown, who has worked with George Michael and Elton John, claims kudos matters as much as money. “These days, a lot of directors and production companies will waive their fees to make a music video,” Brown says. “Generally, you get a lot more freedom making music videos then you do commercials, so everything — from the lighting to the location to the guest stars — is now negotiable. The right artist can get an exceptional video for a fraction of what it looks like it cost.
“Who knows what the budget for Beyoncé’s 7/11 really was? It’s supposed to have been shot on iPhone, and it’s so lo-fi, it possibly was. But did they have a team of stylists, make-up artists and a huge crew? Were the dancers friends? Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. Saying you spent $1m is a great story, but videos are judged regardless of cost.”
A bonus track on the reissue of Beyoncé’s most recent album, 7/11 is a prime example of a song that exploded because of its video. Yet it was small-scale compared with the 17 videos that accompanied the original album. Meanwhile, Swift got her gal pals free, the outfits were lent by an LA sex shop, and you can bet she got a good deal on the special effects.
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So the event video is back, but it doesn’t mean a return to the $7m Michael and Janet Jackson spent on Scream, the most expensive pop video ever. Now it’s more about an original idea, famous faces or setting out to shock (though let’s see if the newly announced BBFC ratings system curbs that). Or, in One Direction’s case, the element of surprise.
The boyband’s current hit, Drag Me Down, was released without a video, a striking statement that helped them to top charts worldwide and sent a strong message to YouTube about its tiny revenues. Two weeks ago, the band announced that a video was finally being filmed — at Nasa’s Space Center Houston. Whether they paid to film there, we don’t know, but as you read this, Nasa is probably trending on Twitter.