Goodwin's theory

After spending years analyzing music videos and the music industry, Andrew Goodwin put together a set of key features which apply to all music videos. Of course not all of the features are applied in every music video, however at least one feature included is either complimentary, contradicting or amplified. These features were illustrated in his book 'Dancing in the distraction Factory (1992).


- Relationship between the lyrics and the visuals.

- Themes, mise-en-scene and events of the video match with lyrics of the song, to help to portray the message of the song. For example we need to link the lyrics that we use to the events that are portrayed in the video.

In Oasis's music video 'supersonic' the lyrics of the song ultimately help to portray their feelings of loneliness and isolation, in the song they say 'I need to be myself, I can't be no one else' This also means that they feel like they can't do anything right as everyone is always judging them and need time to be alone, this is shown throughout the visuals of the video as they are pictured standing at the front of a town hall as a singular group. 

- The cuts and edits of the video are in sync with the rhythm and beat of the song matching cuts or effects to specific drum beats or notes.

The picture from left to the right show the beat of the song suddenly changing in the song 'Supersonic'. At the start of the song the beat is very steady and suddenly starts to increase and then the beat drops and the vocals 'I'm feeling supersonic, give me gin and tonic' are introduced into the video.

- Music videos have genre characteristics - Certain features are expected out of a video depending on the genre of the music, for example a girl bands/artists are expected to have dancers and close ups of the singers, whilst the band are expected to have performance shots of the band and cut to a fast beat. In call of Oasis' songs there are shots of the band all either sat down together or stood up together singing and playing instruments. 

In the music video supersonic, all the band members are pictured stood together singing the song in front of a town hall. This allows the record label to promote a set image for the band, which will help target audiences empathise with the band.

In our music video we will try to recreate the same picture by placing the lead singer in the front adn the musicians in the background playing the music. This feature is seen and used within many Britpop music videos.

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Often due to the demands of the record label, artists videos will include many close ups of the artist and will often develop motifs that recur across multiple videos



In the music video of Supersonic there are many close ups of both Noel  and Liam Gallagher. This is ultimately done to portray that they are the main Artist's in the video.

We can use Goodwin's theory in order to make our music video more appealing to the audience. Moreover, Relationships of lyrics and visuals can be used in the song we pick easily by picking out key verbs from within the lyrics and acting them out or having a specific object on display in order to depict this. Relationships between music and visuals would be simple concept to by using someone playing an instrument during a solo. Music video genre characteristics are also very straight-forward and easy to watch, this is due to the fact that the main singers dominate the music video and the band are always shown behind the artist. The emphasis of the male gaze could be used by using a female as the lad singer, this therefore attracts males to watch the music video. However, if we use a male as the lead vocalist then this will not create a male gaze and this will make them less intrigued to watch the music video. It would be hard to find a vocalist who can compromise with both of these needs (female and strong singing ability).