Since its official debut in 1981 on MTV (with The Buggles, Video Killed the Radio Star), the music video has been used as both an artistic outlet and a marketing and promotion tool. It is unique in its utilization across many fields borrowing techniques from film and television, dance choreography, theater and visual art to visualize both the lyrical and aural content of music. The resulting narrative (The Killer’s “A dustland fairytale,” 2009), or art piece (Jay-Z’s “Picasso Baby,” 2013), is often a mix of musical and visual codes that can work together as a commentary on race, class, gender and sexuality. This course will trace the entire history of the music video (beginning well before 1981) through to the present, exploring the connection and interrelations between culture, film and television, and music. Using numerous music videos as examples, we will explore and analyze techniques such as editing (used much more frequently than in film), and how it creates a visual landscape and serves to outline the rhythm or form of the music; video genres, which often denote a specific setting to put certain cultural associations in the ear and eye of the listener (hip hop videos, for example, are often set realistically outdoors (e.g., Tyler, The Creator’s “WusYaName,“ 2021) as opposed to pop videos that are more fantasy-oriented (e.g., (G)I-DLE’s “Nxde,” 2022); sexuality and gender in both male and female artists and how their portrayals have changed over time (e.g., Lady Gaga’s “Stupid Love,” 2020) and how this intersects with ethnicity (e.g., Anitta feat. Cardi B & Myke Towers’, “Me Gusta,” 2020).