Easy enough to see that if we started with radiothons and then moved quickly to telethons, then YouTube global fund-raising concerts from the living rooms of covid-quarantined superstars will inevitably come to be called videothons.
But featuring lots & lots of music with each and every telethons have long been just taken for granted : so why gild the lily by then adding the redundant word music to the term ?
Because the ‘music video’ really is sui generis : it takes the 1920s feature film with silent action from the stars and music underscore from invisible musicians & singers and flips the whole concept.
Suddenly the musicians and the singers are the (highly visible) stars and the shadowy-silent moving images of humans merely amplify (underscore) the lyrics and music : the silent but active moving images are literally on a backscreen while the front of the stage is reserved for the audible but motionless singer and musicians.
As a now traditional vehicle for promoting a four minute single, this reversal has been rather taken for granted.
But lengthened into a 120 minute long movie or stage musical it really is something totally new with no precedents everywhere no matter how far back you go in history......
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