Did music videos matter more when we were younger - or do they just matter less now?

When I was younger I used to think a song wasn’t complete until I’d seen the music video, writes Music News Blitz’s Fatima Aziz.

The video wasn’t just an add-on, it was the version of the song that stuck. 

You didn’t just hear it, you saw it. 

You knew the outfits, the storyline, the exact moment the chorus hit because something dramatic happened on screen. 

The song and the video became inseparable.

Maybe this is a very specific kind of nostalgia, but it feels like that doesn’t happen as much anymore.

It’s not that music videos don’t exist, they do, and some are still incredible. 

But they don’t feel as central. 

Songs take off before a video even drops. Sometimes you don’t realise there even is a video until weeks later, and when you finally watch it, it doesn’t quite reshape the song in the way it used to. 

It just sits alongside it.

Music videos as events

Growing up, music videos felt like events. There was a sense of anticipation even if you weren’t literally waiting for a TV premiere, there was still that moment of it’s finally out. 

You’d watch it properly, not half-paying attention, and then watch it again. And again. 

It wasn’t background content.

Now, music fits more easily into the background of everything else. You hear songs while scrolling, walking, studying and they slip into your day rather than interrupting it. 

Because of that, the visual side of music doesn’t always carry the same weight. 

A video asks you to stop and watch, and we’re less used to doing that.

Trending music 

There’s also something about how quickly songs move now. 

A track can blow up overnight, peak and start to fade before there’s even time for a video to define it. 

The moment of a song isn’t built around one big visual release anymore it’s scattered across clips, performances and edits. 

The identity of a song becomes more fragmented.

Music videos feel less powerful 

I wouldn’t say that music videos now are worse, they’re just less definitive.

At the same time, I don’t think it’s as simple as saying they’ve declined. 

When a music video does land, it still matters. You can still feel it when the concept is strong enough, when the visuals actually add something and it gives the song a new layer instead of just illustrating it. 

Those moments still cut through but now they feel rarer.

What to expect

So maybe the question isn’t “are music videos dying?” but “what do we expect from them now?”

Because when I think about it, part of the reason they felt so important before is that we gave them our full attention. We let them shape the song. 

Now, we hear songs first, live with them, attach our own meanings and by the time the video arrives, it’s almost too late to redefine anything.

Or maybe we’ve just grown out of that way of experiencing music. 

Maybe nothing will ever feel quite as immersive as discovering a song and its visuals at the same time, when everything still felt new and slightly bigger than it actually was.

Either way, I still catch myself going back and watching old music videos in full and every time, it reminds me of how much they used to matter.

READ NEXT: Music opinion: Why does every song now have multiple versions?