Music video is one of the most important emergent cultural forms in contemporary popular culture. It has had a profound impact both on music, fashion and youth culture, and on the codes and forms that operate across television, film and advertising. But until now criticism has denied the specific nature of the form and its cultural history. Sound and Vision is the first significant collection of new and classic texts on video and brings together some of the leading international cultural and music critics writing today. Addressing one of the most controversial forms of popular culture in the contemporary world, the book confronts easy interpretations of music television - as promotional vehicles, filmic images, postmodern culture - to offer a new and bold understanding of its place in pop music, television and the media industries.
Moving debates on from such early preoccupations as whether videos are promotions or songs, or simply mini-films, or whether they represent the destruction of or the salvation of pop music, Sound and Vision acknowledges the history of the commercial status of pop music as a whole, as well as its complex relations with other media, to offer a new and refreshing interpretation which takes both terms - music and video - seriously. Sound and Vision will be an essential text for students of popular music and popular culture.