MTV has pulled down the shutters on its dedicated music video channels, casting off what remained of its original raison d’être. In the age of YouTube and TikTok, the only surprise is that it’s taken so long. This is a signal moment. As a truly mass medium, the music video is – after almost half a century – over. Who mourns for it? Not me, anyway. For me, video shrunk music down rather than opened it up.

The form emerged from the homespun promotional films shot by record companies in the 60s and 70s. These ‘pre-video’ videos, such as they are, are often more interesting than what followed, simply because the deadening smack of rote production, of This Is The Way Of Doing It, hadn’t yet occurred. The film for the Kinks’ minor 1966 hit ‘Dead End Street’, for example, accidentally captures pre-multicultural Kentish Town in its expiring days. More often than not, though, these affairs were slung together, spliced like home movies on grubby 16mm film. To avoid even the small bother of syncing up the music, they usually depicted the singer just mooching about the streets like someone who’d lost their front door key.

This wasn’t food for the soul – on the contrary, it ate you

The advent of the music video as The Video in the early 80s changed the relationship between artist and listener. Often, when we listen to music, we close our eyes. But the video was now........

© The Spectator