Steve Shields (21) of no fixed hairdo has been Assistant Editor of Video World for the past two years in which time he has become a devoted fan of the promo video.

Everyone and their mothers must have seen a pop video of some description or another by now; what do you reckon? Stylised images used as a stimulating visual backdrop to an audio experience? Or, more to my way of thinking, thinly disguised advertisements for hastily conceived ditties that positively rely on a snappy video before anyone will give it any attention whatsoever. With ninety nine percent of today's commercial music being so bland and samey the only thing that sets one song apart from another is, inevitably, the video. Duran Duran were one of the first bands to fully realise the potential selling qualities of the 'promo', and exploited this knowledge to the full — understandable enough. Record Company Bosses were quick to grasp the benefits too: employing trendy, good-looking, talentless never-have-beens to chum out any old crap in a vain attempt to get their singles on the magical, mystical selling machine (that's a telly for the less cynical among you!). It worked too...

The (not so) Great British public were mesmerised. Offices, pubs and, especially, youth clubs up and down the country were buzzing with banal "Did you See's?" and over ecstatic "Wow! The so-and-so's new video's". Wankers! I've always said it — and no one's ever understood it — but where music's concerned, close your eyes and open your ears!! What the teeny-bobbers haven't seemed to fathom out yet is, you just can't (to my knowledge) get pictures off vinyl; what genuinely looks great on Top Of The Pops more often than not sounds shitty when placed on your turn-table. And with the record buying public getting younger by the day, these pop videos are becoming accordingly more crass. Subtlety is discarded in favour of hard sell images — listen to this song through your polkadot Walkman, and you too could have a girlfriend like mine!

So, what of the producers and directors? Proven genii (geniuses?) like Russell Mulcahy and Julian Temple. Are they in it purely for the money too? Or do they have deep and mysterious artistic interests at heart? Do they, for instance, argue with Record Company Bosses about what they can and cannot film? Well, the simple answer is, not very often. Many of these enterprising young people have made that all important transition to entrepreneurial young people and started up their own production companies dealing specifically with pop videos. The record companies (or already extremely wealthy bands) then approach these production companies with a record, and the production team then provide them with a video. The ideas/concepts/scenarios etc. are (9 times out of 10) dreamt up by the assigned director so the ball, as they say, is placed fairly and squarely in his court.

"How abtholutely thuper," you enthuse, "tho you're thaying that these diwector chappies are given an entirely fwee hand with which to endulge their contheptual artithtic talenth?" (I know how you OTT readers speak — I've heard you in the newsagents!). No. No no no. The cold grip of capitalism is even too powerful for these (supposedly) expressive personalities to escape. They, like me, are all too painfully aware of the fact that the image... sells the single. If they even get close to over indulging their artistic talents they'll be (financially) cutting their own throats; Saturday Superstore's producers would take one look at it and say "... no way, too high-brow..." and wallop! The promo doesn't get shown, the teenyboppers can't gasp and ponder over the stunning visionary and won't, as a result, hand over their pocket money.

Of course I'm not saying that there aren't any good pop videos (I think I did see one, once...), because there are (or at least have been). But it's usually the videos that the musicians themselves have had some creative involvement with that strike the right balance. For the bands who simply hand over their singles to the film companies, it would be like a writer selling the film rights to his/her best-selling novel, only to see it bastardised by (apparently) unimaginative producers/directors. But, and it's a crucial 'but' this, the bands in question (questionable bands?) haven't got a best-selling anything to hand over, that's why they're given to the production houses. (Bloody obvious really).

To sum up I can think of no better quote to clarify the sometimes bizarre, always complex pop video syndrome, and that comes from a member (I'm afraid I can't remember which one) of that much talked about — and, I suspect, often threatened — group of enigmatic gentlemen, Sigue Sigue Sputnik. When the subject of video came round and the interviewer asked what was happening (in reference to them) in that field, the said musician replied... "Well, we've got a great new video, now all we need is the song to go with it"(!) Enough said?