In 1986, the English rock musician Peter Gabriel scored a worldwide smash with his album So and its leading song Sledgehammer, which became successful both artistically and commercially. As one of the first to use stop motion claymation, the Sledgehammer video directed by Stephen R. Johnson has been praised as groundbreaking and won a series of awards, including a record nine MTV Video Music Awards in 1987 and the No.1 MTV animated video of all time in 1998. This post will briefly analyse it from different aesthetic perspectives.

Under the background of music video’s industrialisation and the rise of MTV in the 1980s, many creators began to explore the use of avant-garde visual effects and experimental innovations to attract the audience and increase sales. What distinguishes the Sledgehammer video from others is the use of traditionally analogue mediums, including claymation, pixilation, and especially stop-motion animation: Real objects on site are filmed frame-by-frame to create the illusion of movement when being played back. According to Arnold, G. et al. (2017), it constructs a world of technical and creative between art and commerce, which represents illustration and documentation of musical performance, as well as visual creativity and imagination.

Basically, the video is a visual recreation of the lyrics on and around the singer’s face, following a clear sound-image relationship. It creates a dreamy atmosphere dramatically playing with elements such as steam trains, paper planes, blue skies and fruits. From 00:40 to 00:52, when the beat becomes strong, the video shows the singer blinking, moving his ears and opening his mouth following the rhythm. As a consequence, the Sledgehammer video was a comprehensive success both artistically and commercially: It is made to be impressive through a variety of Kaleidoscope-style features, including footage of the singing scene, colourful settings and unique technologies, maintaining the attention and discussion until nowadays.

Reference

Arnold, G. et al. (2017) Music/video histories, aesthetics, media. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

Buskin, R. (2021) Classic tracks: Peter Gabriel ‘Sledgehammer’. Available at: https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/classic-tracks-peter-gabriel-sledgehammer (Accessed: November 28, 2022).

McEwan, C.K. (2019) 19 facts you didn’t know about Peter Gabriel’s sledgehammer video, Metro. Metro.co.uk. Available at: https://metro.co.uk/2016/04/25/peter-gabriels-sledgehammer-is-30-years-old-19-facts-you-didnt-know-about-the-groundbreaking-video-5786791/ (Accessed: November 28, 2022). 

Transcript of MTV’s “Top 10 Animated Videos Countdown” (1998) https://web.archive.org/web/20120710053630/http://www.outpost-daria.com/ts_top10.html 

By Peijia Hu – 2022/11/28