How important are stars in music videos?

To me, the importance of stars in music videos depends on a variety of different variables, the main one being how big the band or artist is. There are many bands whose music I know that I would not be able to place upon seeing them in the street, for example Chase and Status and Pendulum. Having the stars from these particular bands in their music videos would not really make any difference to the viewer, as they are probably not able to place their face anyway.







In pendulums hit song ‘witchcraft’ they do use the band on the video, however throughout the video their faces are blurred and the audience is not able to see them properly, not only does this fit in with the bands dark and underground aura but it also gives the connotations that the band feels that their fame and fortune comes second to the actual music and narrative of the video, instead choosing to use a woman floating for the most part of their video, moving in time to the beat drops. Which are the most nostalgic pieces of the song, again showing that their music is more important to them than their image.






For these reasons I do not feel that it is incredibly important for an artist to be featured in their video, however I do feel that the more high profile that artist is, the more likely they are to feature in their own video, for example main stream pop music artists like Beyonce or JLS are bound to have the artist within the video so that the music producers are able to sell the product with ease.
Some music videos do have stars in, but they are not the stars that have produced the music for example ‘uptown girl’ by Billy Joel features glamour model and playboy bunny of the time Christie Brinkley









In conclusion, I do not think that it is mandatory to include the star of a song in the music video; in some ways having a big name in the video overcasts the point and narrative to the song, and can become boring after a while. Personally I prefer artists such as Pendulum that concentrate more on the music and storytelling side of a music video, as to engage the audience into the point they are attempting to portray.