The era of videos like Michael Jackson’s Thriller, Tina Turner’s Simply The Best, and Diana Ross’s Chain Reaction are long gone. Instead we’re stuck with videos that may you think, “Haven’t I seen this before?” Yes, you probably have.

Beyonce is not the only performer hurting music videos’ reputation.

Watch Amerie’s One Thing and then Gotta Work. Not only are the songs similar but the videos too. One Thing was her biggest hit, but is that an excuse to reproduce it entirely? Use the same producer or songwriter, but the music and video too? So far for her, lightning has not struck twice.

These days artists just cannot produce a great song AND video. They achieve one, but not the other. A prime example of this is Ciara and her flop single Go Girl. I personally wasn’t impressed by the video, but it did try something brand new. People raved about it…but those same people did not buy the song because it was terrible. Another case is Rihanna and her single Rehab with Justin Timberlake. The song is great, but instead of going with a touching video to show some versatility, it centres around Rihanna posing with a man- how original is that?

Anyway, this is my view…What’s yours?

When I was younger, my sister and I would love to watch music videos. I remember Tupac’s Changes and TLC’S No Scrubs on constant rotation, and we never got bored watching it. I found TLC’ s video recently on Youtube, and the song and accompanying video were still fresh.

Fast forward ten years, and music videos have all been seen before. Now artists use the same old concepts from yesteryear (or yesterday) to try and impress us. I see a video now and don’t desire to ever see it again. Instead of originality we get posers with as many naked women as possible.

I’ll use Beyonce as an example because she’s my favourite singer, and I’ve seen all of her videos.

I think that the videos for her Dangerously In Love album were superb. Each one of them (Crazy In Love, Baby Boy, Naughty Girl and Me, Myself and I) all stand out in my mind, and I could see them over and over again. They are all different from each other, show different sides of Beyonce, e.g. Baby Boy is hot and wet meanwhile MM & I is serious and touching, and they were all high quality.

I think that it went downhill after the DIL era. I do like the Deja Vu video, but it had to grow on me. It’s a great example of today’s videos that just focus on looks instead of substance. Ring The Alarm ‘s video shows the low budget put into what used to mini-movies. Irreplaceable is a complete bore-fest, an ancient storyline involving a woman kicking her boyfriend out.

Single Ladies. I did not like it at first, but it grew on me and now I love it. SL shows the great rewards of taking risks, instead of following the same old, far too tired methods. She started a craze that spread worldwide and took the internet by storm! Who hasn’t tried the routine at some point? I know that the video was ‘inspired’ by Fosse, but at least she modernised it, bringing Fosse to a new generation. Even If I Were A Boy feels fresh. The song’s concept has been done before, but twist in the video balances that out.

Then Beyonce slipped.

The videos for Diva, Halo, Broken Hearted Girl, and Ego have brought her high standard back down to everyone else’s. I know that videos don’t have to completely follow the lyrics, but Diva is just a quirky fashion show. Halo and BHG are just Beyonce rolling around with a guy, and Ego is SL, the lifeless version that we were never meant to see.

What do you think?