Goodwin's theory of sub-genres in music videos

Goodwin's theory states that music videos demonstrate characteristics. This means that Music from different genres usually have corresponding styles of video.

Goodwin's sub-genres:

• Performance - where the artist or band performs music
• Narrative - a sort of mini-film, possibly telling the story of the song
• Cameo - where the band or artist appears but does not perform the song
• Dance routine - where the artist or band dances to the music

Heavy metal

The genre of music that is most commonly seen with the sub-genre of 'Performance' is Heavy rock. One example of this is in the music video for the song 'Smells like teen spirit' by Nirvana.

Boy/Girl band

In the song 'Beat again', by JLS (a boy band), the whole music video is a dance routine by the singers in the boy band. This music video conforms to what the audience would expect from a boy band. One boy band that rejects this stereotype is One direction.

In the song 'Steal my girl' by One direction, there is little performance, but most of it is narrative.

Hip-Hop

One good representation of Goodwin's theory is in the song 'Watch me', by Silento. In this music video for this Hip-hop song, there is only a dance routine and performance. This is the case with most Hip-Hop music videos.

Country

For most country music, as the songs are usually telling a story, the coinciding videos are of narrative form. One example of this is in the music video fro the song 'Wagon wheel', by Darius Rucker.






Another example of this is in the song 'People are crazy', by Billie Currington. The only difference between this music video and Wagon Wheel, is that in this song there is more performance and less narrative.










Pop
Pop music about 10 years ago would usually have an equal mix between performance and narrative, but now days it is almost completely narrative. One example of this is in the song 'We don't talk anymore', by Charlie Puth.