Music videos are essentially advertisements that aim to anchor meaning for songs in viewers' minds. According to Andrew Goodwin, music videos demonstrate genre characteristics through elements like dance routines, ignore common narrative structures, and draw on intertextual references. Goodwin identifies six key features of music videos: they represent lyrics and tone of music visually, cater to record label demands like close-ups of artists, reference looking through devices, and feature recurring visual motifs for artists.

1. Andrew Goodwin - Music Video Theory
"Music videos ignore common narrative as they are essentially advertisements. As
consumers, we make up our own meaning of a song in our minds: a music video
can anchor meaning and gives the record company/artist a method of anchoring
meaning"
Andrew Goodwin’s 6 Features of Music Videos
(from ‘Dancing in the Distraction Factory’)
• Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics. (e.g. stage performance in
metal videos, dance routine for boy/girl band, aspiration in Hip Hop)
• There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals. The lyrics are represented
with images. (either illustrative, amplifying, contradicting).
• There is a relationship between music and visuals. The tone and atmosphere
of the visual reflects that of the music. (either illustrative, amplifying,
contradicting).
• 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)
• There is frequently reference to notion of looking (screens within screens,
mirrors, stages, etc) and particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body.
• There are often intertextual references (to films, tv programmes, other music
videos etc).