Performance Video

Videos consisting largely of the band performing their song, either in front of an audience or not. Can sometimes overlap with the Video Full of Film Clips.

This was the way most music videos were done until Duran Duran and Michael Jackson hit the scene.

Examples of Performance Video include:

• Aerosmith had several of these, including "Rag Doll", "Love In An Elevator", "The Other Side", "Blind Man", and "What It Takes".
• Jason Aldean and Kelly Clarkson's "Don't You Wanna Stay" has a music video that is literally just footage of them performing the song at the Country Music Association awards.
• Daft Punk - Robot Rock is pretty much their only straight example.
• Arctic Monkeys - "I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor" and "Teddy Picker", with and without an audience respectively.
• Battles - "Atlas"
• The Beatles'. "Ticket to Ride" comes to mind.
• Many of the music videos for The Monkees, inserted at the end of TV episodes (particularly those shot in the “Rainbow Room”: “Daydream Believer,” “Pleasant Valley Sunday,” “Randy Scouse Git,” etc.).
• Bon Jovi's "You Give Love a Bad Name." The second half of "Livin' on a Prayer" is like this.
• All of David Bowie's clips through 1977; 1983's "Modern Love" is his most famous post-'70s performance vid.
• Coldplay - "Life In Technicolor II". Essentially a performance video, in front of an audience (and on - there's Crowd Surfing at one point); includes gratuitous Marshall amps, instrument destruction, flashy lights and pretty much everything else you'd expect. Oh, and it's a puppet show.
• Chris Cornell - "You Know My Name" (theme tune to the James Bond film Casino Royale)
• "Pump It Up" by Elvis Costello. Very simplistic execution.
• A variation was used in the Dire Straits song "Money For Nothing", where a pair of CGI deliverymen watch the band's performance and recite the song's lyrics (an envious admiration of rock artists).
• "Down with the Sickness" by Disturbed consists entirely of concert footage.
  • Because of its (supposed) similarities to 9/11, "Prayer" was considered for this by the label instead of the expensive video they shot. The band insisted the video's content was required to convey the song's message, and it was ultimately released unedited on the album as a DVD-Audio CD.
• Europe (band) - "The Final Countdown".
• Par for the course with Foo Fighters videos, though some more than others ("All My Life" might be the best example).
• Glassjaw - "Stars", "Jesus Glue", "All Good Junkies Go To Heaven", and "You Think You're (John Fucking Lennon)". All of them filmed in a one-take Dogme 95 style.
• The vast majority of Journey's videos were this. They tried to do stylized choreographed videos for the songs "Separate Ways" and "Chain Reaction", but those didn't work out so well.
• The Knack's "My Sharona".
• Most of Hall & Oates videos from the 80's, notable examples include "I Can't Go For That (No Can Do)" and "You Make My Dreams".
• Linkin Park has an interesting take on the concept: The video for "Bleed It Out" has the band performing in front of a reversed Bar Brawl.
• New Order - a band best known for surreal music videos in which they don't appear - still have two of these, and both of them were coincidentally directed by directors who would later win Oscars. Jonathan Demme directed "The Perfect Kiss", in which the band simply play the song in a small recording studio. Kathryn Bigelow directed "Touched By The Hand Of God", a parody of Hair Metal performance videos which features the band dressed as an American metal band.
• "March Of The Pigs" by Nine Inch Nails, which also happens to be a Oner
• Nirvana's video for "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was one of these, though the audience in question wasn't a concert audience.
  • Not surprisingly, Weird Al Yankovic did the same thing in his music video for "Smells Like Nirvana", which parodied "Smells Like Teen Spirit".
• OutKast - "Hey Ya!"
• Pearl Jam - "Even Flow" and "Alive".
  • The video for "Alive" is even set to a different version of the song, in line with the playing live setting.
• A Perfect Circle - "Judith"
• "Here Comes Your Man" by The Pixies is a slight subversion, showing Black Francis and Kim Deal blatantly lip-syncing to the song by just opening their mouths during their respective vocal parts and not moving them. Francis hated lip-syncing. Their videos for "Head On" (split-screened) and "Alec Eiffel" (filmed in a wind tunnel with physics equations flashing onscreen) were also performance videos.
• One or two of Priestess' videos.
• Rammstein - There's "Feuer Frei", which is half this, half Video Full of Film Clips, and more recently "Ich tu dir weh".
• Rooster - "Staring at the Sun"
• The Strokes - "Last Nite"
• Taylor Swift's "Change", "Fearless", and "Sparks Fly".
• System of a Down - "War?", "Chop Suey!", "Hypnotize". Although "War?" and "Hypnotize" were shot during actual concert performances, "Chop Suey!" had a crowd just for the music video but I think they did put on show for the gathering of fans afterwords.
• Van Halen - "Jump." So simplistic a video for one of the most outlandish rock bands of the 1980's, it usually shows up on almost any kind of "Greatest Music Videos of All Time" lists in the media.
• Weezer - "Buddy Holly"
• A number of Wolfmother videos.
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs - most of them.
• Christian Kane's The House Rules has Christian check out the bar, go backstage, and when he comes back up ten seconds later, the concert's in full swing. Without missing a beat, he joins in and it becomes this.
• The Black Mages' video for Neo-Exdeath. Also a bit of a Mind Screw in that it flips back and forth between the band performing in normal clothes in a well-lit studio room to wearing robes and wizard hats in a dark, fog-filled room lit only with small spotlights. The full version of this video on the Darkness & Starlight DVD has more footage of them performing in wizard garb, and in longer stretches instead of just a few frames at a time.
• Little Jackie's The World Should Revolve around Me
• The Veronicas Revolution is 100% a part of their Revolution tour.
• Delta Goodrem's has done this twice, once with Be Strong which was also a Behind the scenes video and Predictable which was her Live @ VHQ performance played straight.
• "What a Horrible Night to Have a Curse" by The Black Dahlia Murder is this intercut with clips of the band members goofing off.
• The Melvins' "Lizzy" and "Honey Bucket" are odd twists on this: In one the band is playing on what looks to be a stage for children's plays, and the audience bounce one of it's members around on a rubber net, break open a clown pinata, and eventually demolish the stage while the band is still playing. In the other, the band is playing in a barn and the audience are sheep.
• Seal's "Kiss From a Rose", the Award Bait Song from Batman Forever. It features Seal performing the song in front of the Bat-signal, spliced with clips from the film.
• That's All by Don Juan y Los Blancos is this, with the singers using bananas as microphones. The only audience is a cardboard shark, but he seems to be digging it.