Music Video: messages and structures by Deborah H. Holdstein notes

"Bands must take performance into account nowadays when they present themselves to the public"

Now that music video has pulled the record business from its worst slump in years, a stars video image could be the crucial difference between a mediocre and exciting music video --- a mediocre and exciting career.

This "sense of performance" distinguishes the more successful music videos from others --- in terms of composition, lighting, mise-en-scene, and the need to use or reject the songs narrative as the foundation for the films visual backdrop.

Most important, however, artists with any amount of creative control over the content and "look" of their videos become responsible for helping to create the video artwork instead of mere taped performance. They also become their own screen persona --- a powerful influential person with genre-specific and political implications.

So, too, have the music stars featured in more carefully constructed videos begun to create screen and, by extension, music personalities.

The video image is quicker and more potent. Rather than waiting for documentaries and concert performances to record and reveal Mick Jagger's 'demonic' persona, the immediacy of television brings the chosen visual personae of Michael Jackson, Donna Summer, David Bowie and endless other stars and would-be stars through our cable and commercial channels.

For artists successful enough to assume at least some creative input --- we can assume this with Jackson, Summer and Bowie, for example --- these images telescope the mythmaking process. The video images leave us with interesting implications about the stars "image" that go beyond the powers of publicists and the usual star making system.

The visual and content goals of these videos seem to divide into two categories: those with explicit "political" themes, and those which revive traditional U.S. film musical and represent its newest incarnation.

Many others fall into still another category: the fantasy video, based entirely