Andrew Goodwin wrote a book in 1992 called "Dancing in the Distraction Factory" about media theory and music videos. He identified 6 key features of music videos including demonstrating genre characteristics through relationships between lyrics and visuals. Goodwin also outlined 5 ways to analyze music videos such as examining the structure and voice of the song, narrative and performance aspects, the development of the star's image over time, relationships between visuals and lyrics, and technical production elements like editing.

1. Andrew Goodwin (1992)
Media theorist who wrote a book called ‘Dancing in the Distraction Factory’
6 features of a music video:
1. Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics
2. There are relationships between lyrics and visuals. The lyrics are
represented with images.
3. There is a relationship between the music and the visuals. The tone
and atmosphere of the visual reflects that of the music.
4. The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of
close ups of the artist and the artist may develop motifs which recur
across their work (a visual style)
5. The frequently reference to notion of looking and particularly
voyeuristic treatment of the female body.
6. There are often intertextual reference
5 ways to analyse a music video
1. Thoughts beats – where you ‘see’ the sound
Step 1. To look at the music itself. We must take into account the
structure of the song.
Step 2. The voice of the song. Unique and can form identification.
Step 3. Artist’s mode of address. Songs can be seen as stories and the
artist the storyteller, making the music video a two communication
device – them telling us a story and we listen.
2. Narrative and Performance
Songs fail to give us the whole narrative – we get a gist of the meaning
and we add our own meanings to it and music videos should ignore
common narrative. Music videos should have coherent repeatability.
The artist acting both as narrator and participant helps to increase the
authenticity however the lip sync and other mimed actions remains the
heart of the music videos.
3. The star image
The star image is a vital aspect. Meta narrative which is big story that
describes the development of the star over time has an important part
to play in the music video production process. How is the star
represented?
4. Relation of visuals to song
There are three ways in which music videos work to promote a song:
 Illustrate – use of a set of images to illustrate the meaning of lyrics
and genre
 Amplify – meanings and effects are manipulated and constantly
shown through the video and drummed into our vision

2.  Disjuncture – this is where the meaning of the song is completely
ignored
5. Technical aspects of a music video
Mise-en-scene, sound, cinematography and editing and beats