C HARTING POP

The pop video has had plenty of ups and downs over the years. In the 1980s the more money you could spend, it seemed, the more chance you would get of a slot on Top of the Pops and of creating a buzz on the 20th century’s form of social media - good old-fashioned word of mouth.

But while it took a dip, YouTube and social media have once again seen budgets splurged in a bid to get your song playing around the world.

Just as an indication of the impact they can have, 2017’s Despacito, by Luis Fonsi, has chalked up more than 6.6billion plays on YouTube.

And over the years there have been plenty of big names who have headed to the county to film the visuals in a bid to boost their latest release.

The following are a mere handful of the acts who filmed in the county - others include the likes of Ellie Goulding in Dungeness, Paloma Faith in Ramsgate, The Saturdays in Whitstable, Emile Sande in Broadstairs and even Dartford’s very own rock god, Mick Jagger, on Sheppey (although, admittedly, he doesn’t actually make an appearance in it).

If you think modern day punk duo, you don’t necessarily think ‘tandem ride around Mote Park’. But the tattooed Isaac Holman and Laurie Vincent, who make up Slaves, do just that for the title track of their second album.

Shot to look like a VHS tape which has been played once too often, the duo, who hail from Tunbridge Wells, ride around the Maidstone park on a yellow bike with a ghetto blaster (or boombox if you will) strapped to the front.

The song itself has echoes of the Beastie Boys about it - which is probably in part due to the album producer being the seminal rap band’s Mike D.

It certainly didn’t harm sales - the album for which it was promoting flew into the charts at number six.

Granted, the stars of the show - The Prodigy’s Keith Flint, Maxim and Liam Howlett - appear in this moody black and white video in a sort of ‘blink and you’ll miss them’ capacity but what you lose in terms of the band, you gain in the form of Noel Clarke - then, and probably still, best known for being Mickey Smith in Doctor Who (he was boyfriend of Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) and appeared during the Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant eras). He can be seen in the video strolling over the shingle banks at Dungeness and through the acoustic mirror concrete structures at Denge.

Remain patient and he appears on the opposite side of the county’s coastline on the Red Sands sea forts off the coast of Whitstable where The Prodigy’s ant symbol is seen daubed on top of one of the war time defences.

The song itself was the lead single from the album of the same name and released as a free download. Despite not being commercially released as a single, it still managed to reach number 49 in the charts.