The Andrew Godwin Theory

Andrew Godwin has arrived with a theory in which pop videos do not follow a traditional narrative sequence. He has a various number of reasons to back up his theory such as:

The videos being based around songs, pop videos of this era don't really seem to have narrative structures. Songs are commonly based on problems and them being solved. For those reasons the video has to have some what of a link to the song and its meaning, therefore creating a non narrative pop video.   

Singers in pop videos are both narrators and participants, this naturally may seem abnormal or confusing in the normal eye, but for a pop video its what makes the genre make sense and fit in. This style has become familiar to fans of the pop genre and its gotten to the stage where they understand this style as being typical to a pop video.

And singers performing and looking directly into the camera, involving the audiecne in the performence effects there being any narrative sequence within the video . The singer is aiming the song directly at the viewers and at times like these the sequence of the video tends not to follow any particular trend.


Other features common to pop videos, identified by Andrew Goodwin, a successful pop music video relies strongly on repition. Videos will repeat images throughout the song as well as lyrics (Chorus' and specific lines). This repetition leads to the familiarisation, standards and expectations of the genre. To add to the genres repeptitive nature, the video and song will be played on television and radio stations again making the audience and viewers aware and very much familiar through repetition.
Music videos in general have some sort of ending to them, in most cases the ending is dependant on the structure of the video and music (song).
Visual factors sometimes stretch beyond the original meaning of the song and provide visual enjoyment for the audience which leads to repeptitive viewing, leading to the promotion of the music.

In other cases such as when a video is promoting a film for example, there are three types of relations between songs and their videos: Illustration, Amplification and Disjuncture.