Reading skills - POP VIDEO

      POP VIDEO

     Do you ever wonder why some pop records are more popular than others? Is it just because of the sound of the music? Read this article about pop videos. Why are they so important these days? 
 

     Did you see Michael Jackson's twenty-minute pop video Thriller'? It cost the American pop star a million dollars to make, and it became a world-wide best-seller. Pop videos which appear on the American MTV Channel can make unknown singers or groups into overnight millionaires. The Birmingham group Duran became famous only after their first video. That made all the difference.

     Videos are the biggest thing on the pop music since the sixties. British record companies are now spending more than £12 million a year on videos of new records. They use them to get their musicians on TV and they sell them in shops. These days it is almost impossible for a group to get into the Top 40 without a good video.

     Jools Holland, the presenter of a British TV pop music programme, receives hundreds of videos every year from record companies.'It's true to say that most pop musicians are dreadful* actors,' say Jools, 'but they don't look too bad when the record companies spend thousands of pounds on video recordings. We'we got some excellent film directors in Britain. Their videos are exciting and imaginative. Far better than the American ones, which are often dull and uninteresting'. Jools Holland gets all kinds of videos: some cost more than £50 000 for three minutes of film; others, from new groups, only cost £500 or less. 'I made one myself, says Jools. 'It cost me next to nothing'.*

     Now that so many British homes have video machines, some people are buying pop videos instead of records. Stars like Boy George, David Bowie and Thompson Twins are almost sure to have good sales, and to get their videos on television.

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