Sound and Vision

Philip Tag(1983) believes that listeners of especially music are able to 'visualise' the music they hear, by making use of semantics, which create a personal, mini music video in their mind. However, this changes for everyone as different people interpret different texts (lyrics) in their own way, according to their personality. Will Straw believes that the use of promotional videos poses as a threat to ones imagination, since it prevents them from visualising the music in their preferred way. He states that the the use of music videos is a way of "diminishing the interpretive liberty of the individual music listener...". According to Goodwin "the debate about whether of not the video images triumphs over the song itself needs to take account of where the emphasis lies in the visualisation, and whether or not it illustrates, amplifies or contradicts the meaning of the song"

• Illustration uses visual narrative to tell the story of the lyrics.

• Amplification introduces new meaning that do not illustrate the lyrics, but add layers of meaning.
  

• Contradictions use obvious visuals that contradict the narrative of the songs.