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{{trope}}
Often used in the [[Concept Video]] to help set up and conclude the "story", [['''Talky Bookends]]''' are those music-free scenes you get at the beginning and end of a music video. In more experimental (or self-indulgent) videos, they can seem to go on for longer than the music.
 
The bookends don't really have to come in pairs -- sometimespairs—sometimes a video will just have an introduction and end in a more traditional way; other times it will play through like an ordinary video and end with a brief non-music scene. It's still a bookend, though, even if there's just one of it.
 
Note that the bookends don't ''really'' have to feature conversation or even any dialogue at all -- sometimesall—sometimes it's as simple as a dialogue-free sequence showing the band setting up their equipment.
 
Repeat showings of the videos tend to quietly cut out the Talky Bookends, particularly if they go on too long.
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** "Bad": The setup establishes that Michael's character is an inner-city youth who was able to attend a private school, and when he returns to his old neighborhood, his former gangmates want him to prove he's still tough. When he cannot bring himself to rob an old man in the subway, the resultant challenge from the leader leads into the song; the full-length version ends with the leader accepting that he's still tough, but in a way that does not require violence to prove it. Keep in mind that this video is ''18 minutes long'' and the song takes up a good five on its own.
*** [["Weird Al" Yankovic]] parodies the setup in a much-condensed manner in "Fat", to the point that it's not trimmed for time.
** ''[[Moonwalker]]'''s segments for "Speed Demon" and "Smooth Criminal" -- Michael—Michael is pursued on a movie set in the former, and the latter sandwiches the song in an elaborate fantasy story about him, his child friends, and Joe Pesci's character Frankie Lideo, who wants to profit from selling drugs to children. Michael saves the day by turning into a sportscar, mecha and spaceship. The middle ten minutes is the music video proper; set in an old dance hall, it has [[Big Lipped Alligator Moment|nothing to do with the plot whatsoever.]]
** "Black or White": Macaulay Culkin's playing his music too loud, and when dad George Wendt objects, he gets blasted out of the house in retaliation. The infamous closing segment is an extended, music-less dance piece for Michael that features a lot of crotch-grabbing and property-smashing.
** "Remember the Time": In ancient Egypt the pharaoh's wife is bored, and he isn't happy to discover that the only performer brought to entertain her turns out to be her former lover Michael.
** ''Ghosts'' '''is''' actually a short film at 38 minutes, with three songs -- butsongs—but there's lots of talking; Michael is a spirit of some sort who faces a [[Torches and Pitchforks]] mob of angry parents [[Does This Remind You of Anything?|who disapprove of his secretly meeting with their children for ghost stories.]]
** "You Rock My World": Circa the 1930s, Michael and his buddy Chris Tucker pursue a pretty woman into a mob-run club whose leader is played by [[Marlon Brando]].
* An odd [[Performance Video]] example: The sequence of the Eagles warming up before "Hotel California".
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** And the sequel, her video to "Telephone" is less than half singing, with enough [[Buffy-Speak|talkiness]] to fill a three and a half minute song into a nine minute video.
** "Marry The Night" has 8 minutes of pre music video discussion before the song starts...
* This trope (along with [[Mid Vid Skit|Mid Vid Skits]]s, fandom specific [[Easter Egg|easter eggs]], and the occasional credits sequence) is the reason why most 30 Seconds to Mars videos are longer than the songs themselves. The worst offender is "Hurricane"; the song is 6 minutes long, the full video is 13 minutes long. The video was originally intended to be ''20 minutes long''. [[Serial Escalation|And who knows how long the tie-in videos they intended to release afterwords were going to be.]]
** The next best offender, “From Yesterday”; the song is around 4 minutes long, the version of the video aired on TV is 4 minutes and 30 seconds. The full length video (not counting the credits) is ''11 minutes''.
** Subverted with "Attack"; both the video and the song end at 3:09. Doesn’t effect the creepy factor any.
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