60 Years Ago, the Beatles Helped Invent the Music Video
In 1995, just shy of 30 years since the release of "Paperback Writer," and its B-side, "Rain," The Beatles' guitarist George Harrison remarked on The Beatles Anthology documentary series that "I suppose, in a way, we invented MTV."
Although music videos are not typically one of the pioneering achievements the Fab Four are credited with when it comes to the making of modern music, the late musician wasn't inaccurate to make such a suggestion.
The songs, released on 30 May 1966, marked a shift away from touring for the group, with the A-side, "Paperback Writer," the last song to be performed live in concert before The Beatles quit touring that year. The decision to abandon concert-playing was largely influenced by the technical limitations of the time, where the band couldn't hear themselves over screaming fans, alongside tinny PA systems producing a garbled, low-quality sound projection of their performances.
The solution for that now-missing link with fans was the medium of film - short films, specifically, recorded during a two-day shoot that, between the two songs, created seven short films that would now be referred to as music videos.
With filming taking place at Abbey Road's Studio One and Chiswick House in London, the results were seven relatively simple music videos of the band performing and lip-syncing to the recorded tracks, although Ringo Starr, sans drums, makes his own fun for much of the footage - partly a tongue-in-cheek move, and partly a logistical choice due to the difficulty of moving drums around at the time.
The music videos offered a kind of intimacy that the current state of live performances could not, seeing The Beatles in a more comfortable setting, with close-ups of their fashion and facial expressions. For example, how would a dedicated Paul McCartney fan get a glimpse of his chipped tooth from a car accident in Shea Stadium?
Broadcast on the British music show Ready, Steady, Go!, as well as the band's fortune-changing American pal, The Ed Sullivan Show, the music videos brought the Beatles to a home near their devoted fanbase. Even if it wasn't quite as exciting as seeing them in the flesh, the shift was much more manageable, quicker to employ, and offered both the safety and the creative space the band required to enable them to create their more elaborate studio-only work, with the timeless Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band being the first album the band fully produced after leaving touring behind.
While not a story-driven, modern music video in the same sense as Michael Jackson's game-changing "Thriller," for example, where the high-budget, John Landis-directed epic was far more cinematic than the simplistic Beatles videos, "Paperback Writer" and "Rain" still helped shape the music video, 17 years before "Thriller." The promotional films helped the group grab back their public image and offered them a new form of creative control, helping to usher in a new era where the relationship between music and visuals drew closer than ever.
This story was originally published by Men's Journal on May 20, 2026, where it first appeared in the News section. Add Men's Journal as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
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This story was originally published May 20, 2026 at 2:43 PM.