The Music Video as an Indicator of Artistic Viability

I purchased Garth Brooks’ The Ultimate Hits two-CD and DVD package months ago but only recently had the chance to do something that I don’t think I’ve done for any other artist: sit down and watch all of the Garth’s major video releases from first to most recent. What I realized about Brooks’ career during this exercise was startling.

I don’t think that Brooks gets enough criticism for what was essentially a very front-loaded career. The Garth of the mid to late nineties too often resorted to vapid high energy songs and ill-conceived artistic “risks” that did little except anger his country fan base, and while Garth was still the dominant radio artist and a sure-bet multiplatinum album seller, the second half of his career just doesn’t measure up to the first. What’s more, I think that even without prior knowledge of Garth’s career, I could have discerned as much from watching The Ultimate Hits DVD…with the sound muted.

My least favorite kinds of music videos are performance-based. Nearly all music videos feature a strong performance element; it’s what makes them music videos rather than short films. I’m talking about those videos where the camera does nothing but pan between different performance shots, and the worst of these videos are assembled from live concert footage. Forget lack of creativity; these videos don’t even force an artist to break their touring schedule long enough to spend a day on a video set.

Garth’s earliest videos ranged from good to brilliant, and it’s clear to me after watching his videos in sequence that Garth peaked with “The Thunder Rolls,” a video that captured the true sentiment of the song, hidden away in that third verse that didn’t make the radio edit.

And then? There are 23 videos between “The Thunder Rolls” and “More than a Memory” on The Ultimate Hits DVD and 15 of them are composed exclusively of live concert footage. Three others show only in-studio performance shots, leaving only five videos between 1991 and 2007 that do anything other than film Garth singing.

Admittedly, these statistics aren’t completely fair. The Ultimate Hits doesn’t present every one of Garth’s video releases, and post-“Friends in Low Places,” Garth did some excellent video work on songs that didn’t make a radio splash. Furthermore, major videos like “We Shall Be Free” and “Standing Outside the Fire” do make an effort, even if they don’t pack the emotional punch that they’re shooting for. And Garth’s recent video work is quite good, even though two (“Workin’ For a Livin’” and “Midnight Sun”) have very lackluster songs to work with.

But I contend that music video quality correlates quite well with both the quality of released music and, to a lesser extent, with its commercial success. The correlation is not one-to-one (bad videos aren’t necessarily bad songs and vice versa), but when an artist’s videos get lazy, their music has often gotten lazy as well, and when even a veteran artist stubbornly refuses to settle for ordinary music videos, that’s a sign of enduring vitality.

Take Garth’s husband Trisha Yearwood, whose current single “This is Me You’re Talking To,” is one of the best of her career. It would be easy, and perhaps even poignant, for Yearwood to stick with the image developed in the song’s opening notes: Trisha singing softly with the orchestra as images of lost love play in the background. Instead, Yearwood and director Trey Fanjoy develop a compelling side story: Yearwood is living the song as she sings it and the object of her past affection (John Corbett) is standing just a few feet away.

Take also Alan Jackson, a study in artistic and commercial longevity. Sure, there are a lot of Alan Jackson performance shots in Roman White’s video for “Small Town Southern Man,” but White constructs a visually stunning and dynamic scene and Jackson himself becomes a character in the video’s chronological shifts and loose narrative. Jackson’s been around almost a long as Brooks and is making better music than the Garth Brooks of the late nineties, and it shows on the video screen.

Of course, the correlation isn’t perfect. Toby Keith, who has made a career of excellent videos, has continued that success despite flagging radio spins and a general decline in the quality of his single releases while Kenny Chesney has been in the artistic death spiral for several years now without a noticeable decline in video quality.

Some artists passionately involve themselves in video production while others hire a director and do little else except show up on set. Yet despite the multifactorial nature of their production, music videos are a sensitive indicator of artistic viability. Note to artists: when you’re mailing it in, it shows.