Emilia bartner
Emilia bartner

The longest music videos and performances

Musicians often experiment with the length of compositions, music videos and performances. Last year, American duo Twenty One Pilots recorded a record-length video that was broadcast for 178 days.

Today we'd like to tell you about some other long-running performances. These include classics from the King of Pop and a millennial musical experiment.


Michael Jackson's creepy dance

In 1993, Michael Jackson wrote the song "IsItScary". It was supposed to become the official soundtrack to the film Addams Family Values. However, the musician had some disagreements with Paramount, so the composition did not become a part of the picture, but if you want music that feet best way to choose royalty free Beat. Then the pop singer decided to make his own little movie based on it. The result was the short film Ghosts, which became the longest music video and made it into the Guinness Book of World Records.

The plot is reminiscent of classic vampire and monster movies. The inhabitants of a small town turn on a hermit living in a mansion in the suburbs. The production was directed by Stan Winston, who has worked on special effects for such franchises as Jurassic Park, The Terminator, Alien and Predator. According to his idea, Michael played several characters - the mayor of the city, a demon, a skeleton.


Authors planned the duration of "Ghosts" to be approximately 22 minutes, but in the process of filming the timing grew to 39 minutes. You can watch the full version of the clip onVimeo. When it was first released, critics met the novelty with coolness. They thought that the concept was not fully revealed, and the musician just clings to the days of former glory, given by the cult "Thriller". However, contemporaries point out that "Ghosts" is a unique and at the same time strange piece of nineties pop culture that few people remember. At the same time, the short film evokes a sense of nostalgia for old horror films.

Pharrell Williams' "infinite" happiness

The short film Ghosts held the title of the longest running music video for seventeen years. Until Pharrell Williams released a twenty-four-hour video for "Happy" in 2013.

The clip is essentially a cut of dancing. Originally the video was supposed to be directed by Woodkid, who worked with Lana Del Rey, but in the end it was handled by the creative collective WeAreFromLA. During filming, they made extensive use of a technique called "Don Juan," where the camera slowly pulls back. Both extras and well-known personalities took part in the project, including rapper Tyler,theCreator, the band OddFuture and actor Steve Carell, known from the TV series "Office". The musician has launched a special website to show the clip, but it is not working at the moment. You can appreciate Farrell's work on YouTube, and for convenience the clip is divided into hour-long segments. However, there is also an official four-minute clip compilation, where the highlights are collected.

It is worth noting that not everyone appreciated the efforts of the singer and his team. It is possible to meet an opinion that the track repeats itself, and that is why the video becomes boring rather quickly. As they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Thousand-year-old music of the singing bowls

The Longplayer project is different from previous performances. It is not a music video, but a musical composition with a planned duration of a thousand years. It has been playing since December 31st, 1999. The track is based on a musical etude on Tibetan bowls lasting 20 minutes and 20 seconds. A special algorithm (the code of which is written in SuperCollider language) mixes its segments so that the music is never repeated during the whole playing time.


Since it is unknown what awaits computing systems in a thousand years, the authors are working on other options for playback, including mechanical playback (in the real world, not the digital one). They have set up a foundation that will ensure the continuity of technology and guarantee that music will continue to be heard. In 2009, for example, there was a thousand-minute live concert, when a group of six musicians played in shifts for sixteen hours in the Bow Creek Lighthouse building in London.

You can listen to the track on the official website (you need to download the pls file) or use a special app.

CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 版权声明

喜欢我的文章吗?
别忘了给点支持与赞赏,让我知道创作的路上有你陪伴。

加载中…

发布评论