Earthquake- Labrinth 

This video is in the mainstream dance genre with aspects of electronic and more recently, rap. Here the video is edited to fit all these genres. For instance, Tinie Tempah does his verse the editing still is more punchy like that of a rap video. To account for the dance and electronic aspect, there are many zooms and slo-mo to cut to the technically slow beat, although the track feels faster.

There is amplification of the meaning of the lyrics since the “earthquake” represents the bass speaker and this is shown through lots of bass speakers and effects, which symbolise a bass speaker.

There lyrics of the chorus are ‘I predict an earthquake up in here’ and whilst this phrase is being sung the camera will often shake or the singer will do something acrobatic like jumping or generally just move very fast.

Whilst these lyrics are being sung in the bridge, there are hooded clones of the singer, matching with the mysterious tone at that moment.

Similarly, as the track hits the chorus meaning the music becomes more textured and lively, the singer will do some sort of acrobatic motion. Again, there is amplification of the music since the visuals match the rhythm and beat of the music.

As the song starts with the build up in the instrumental, the visuals are of pans up and across the body of the man singer without showing his head to create enigma.

Where the music is fast paced the visuals are cut relatively quickly but the speed is fairly similar throughout the video, except during the bridge where the cuts are much slower.

This track surprisingly consists of many extreme longs, and not as many close-up beauty shots as you would expect from such a mainstream music video. There are still the beauty shots of the artist from each different set up.

His sunglasses about to come up every now and then and so after researching Labrinth a little further it seems to be that glasses could be a feature of key iconography. They are part of his artist identity and add to his dress code, so when they are suddenly on it is more distinctive. It gets the audience aspiring to follow his style.

There are many shots of him looking away and out of shot, particularly at the beginning of the video during the build up and just after it. Sometimes he wears the sunglasses so we can’t see his eyes creating enigma, however we still get the impression that he is looking in a certain direction.

At the beginning of the video you see him get out of a Mini Cooper, advertising this car brand through product placement. During the bridge when he is in the hood, you can withdraw connotations of Star Wars, also helped by the spherical object in the middle of the room, making it feel more futuristic and sci-fi.

This is definitely performance driven since there is no narrative flow. The majority of the video is the singer dancing and allowing his outgoing, party, lively personality to show through the choreography.

Textual Analysis: James Morrison- Undiscovered

James Morrison was born in Rugby (England) in 1984. His started getting into music at a young age when his uncle bought and taught him how to play the guitar. His mother and father were both huge fans of music. He continued playing guitar all through childhood and to this day, he still plays it. Guitar is the most used instrument by James Morrison. With this passion for music, he began to cover songs by other artists but soon wrote songs of his own including ‘Broken Strings’ which also features a well-known artist which is Nelly Furtado. 

His singing career took off in 2006 when he released ‘You Give Me Something’, this song went straight to the top at number 2 in the UK and it was also number in the top 5 in 3 other countries. 

The song I’m analysing is ‘Undiscovered ‘by James Morrison from his first Album in 2006 called Undiscovered. The genre of this song is pop/rock and the clothes James Morrison wears in his video really shows that it is pop/rock. 

This song has a couple of links between music and lyrics. The first time this is shown is when  he sings “I just want you to find me’, at this moment in the video, the man starring in this video bumps into a woman. This is as if the woman has found him, this matches the lyrics. However the video contradicts the lyrics because she just walks away from the man. The lyrics at the end of this video says “I’m not lost, no, just undiscovered’, at this point the women he bumped into earlier discovers him and they walk of together. This is another contradiction as the lyrics say that he is undiscovered but in the video it shows that he is discovered. 

In this video, there weren’t many links between the music and the video, the only obvious one is when the music changes ever so slightly where a lot of backing vocals are added to the chorus of the song. The rest of the video just contained James Morrison vocals and this links to the video by there being mainly only one single man, however when the backing vocals kick in there are suddenly a increased amount of people shown in the video, the video turns busy and hectic just like the music. 

In this video there are a lot of close ups of James Morrison’s face which suggests to me like the record company may be trying to sell the music on the looks of the artist. Women that think James Morrison is good looking will like the fact that there are many close ups of his face. The artist is singing about being heartbroken, it is as if he is singing about his life and there is an actor in the video to act out the story. He sings about not being discovered by women and saying that he needs to find one. This maybe could help sell the track because many ladies will feel sorry for him therefore buying his records. Most of the videos by James Morrison is performance based. He is singing by himself in front of a camera most of the time. 

There are many close ups of his face in the video but there weren’t any flashy costume or dance routines because this isn’t his style.

Although most of his videos are performance videos, this one is a narrative video. The story of this song is a well-dressed man that is depressed and he bumps into a woman. When he bumps into this women, sparks automatically appear but they still walk off in opposite directions. The man turns around to go back but the woman keeps on walking but because she is walking off, he thinks better of it. The man starts to walk off again and he is sometimes completely off the screen. But he soon realises that he can’t leave her. Everybody has a small window in their chest. The man just has a old dirty looking heart in his window but a lot of other people’s hearts are gleaming in their windows. He just wants to find love to complete his heart again and this is exactly what happens at the end of this video. It is the same woman that he bumped into earlier. 

In summary, this is a narrative based video about a man trying to find love. This is used because many people in the whole world can relate to this situation and it shows that eventually, everyone finds love.

Noah and the Whale – Five Years’ Time Textual Analysis

Noah and the Whale (NATW) were formed in 2006 and their hit single ‘Five Years’ Time’ was originally released in 2007 and then re-released on 4^th August 2008 and it was their first chart topping song. The video was directed by James Copeman and falls into many genres such as Indie/Alternative/Folk/Pop Rock. This music videos style has been inspired by a Wes Anderson film, using the dame font he uses in his films and this whole video has an Indie feel to it as there is no special effect or flashy clothes and features a lot of performance and illustrative features.

This Music video has adhered to many Pop Rock/Alternative/Indie genre characteristics such as having a lot of the video featuring the band playing their instruments but at the start of the video it introduces the band and each member with mid shots of each member of the band introducing them 1 by one (this is a unique aspect of the video) and they have done this to promote their band plus to get their faces recognised which is popular within this genre. They also have their instruments appear on screen as they start playing on the track splitting the screen into squares which promotes their image as they play an unusual combination of instruments (such as the ukulele, violin and a drum). In this particular video by NATW they have a colour scheme for their clothes only wearing the colours yellow and blue which amplifies the bands image and promotes them as artists. Having this colour scheme is unusual for a band but they don’t fit into a certain genre so they are creating their own image which makes them stands out of the crowd. They have included illustrative dance moves to their video which you usually see in pop videos and this is where the pop characteristics of the band is shown also the upbeat tempo of the song is where the pop genre shines through mainly. The music is very upbeat and happy, the tempo is quick and the tone of the song is light hearted. This is represented in the visuals by a fast cut rate and bright colours. The shots are of people smiling or being generally happy as are the objects show. This is rejecting the conventions of alternative/indie music as usually the songs of this genre are dark and meaningful whereas this song is the opposite.

There are intertextual references in the video, the main reference being the band playing in suits on a small stage which could be interpreted like “Happy Days” TV show in America. The band playing on a small stage and the drummer only having a small part of the drum set could also be a reference to The Beatles. There is also a shot when the band is dressed in rowing/scout costumes this could be a reference to “Oxbridge” students. There is also a line in the song where he sings “I feel no longer I have to be James Dean who was a popular movie star who stared in a movie called ‘Rebel Without a Cause’ and he plays a cool teenage rebel.

The relationship between the lyrics and the visuals is amplifying because in many places in the video they have random shots matching the lyrics such as when they say “we could be walking round the zoo” and it skips to a shot of one of the band members in their band colours at the zoo with a girl. After a few lines it has another amplifying match between the lyrics and the visuals where they sing “and I will put my hands over your but you’ll peep through” This is a mid-shot of one of the band members covering a girls eyes and then she peeps through. Most of the shots and dances in this song are very literal and spell out to the audience what the lyrics are saying. When they are dancing during the chorus when they sing the repetition of the three words “Sun Sun Sun” or “Fun Fun Fun” the words appear on the screen in the Wes Anderson Style.

The relationship between the music and visuals are mainly the band playing their instruments and clapping and the editing in this video stays the same pace throughout but it does pick up slightly throughout the chorus cutting in-between the dancing and the band playing. The video is edited to look like it was shot through a hand crank camera, with a grainy look to it. The colours have been distorted after shooting to make it look like it was shot In the 70s on a hand cranked camera. There points reinforce the fact that this band is alternative and individual and the bands image.

Overall this video is interesting to watch with the 70’s style and the stupid dance moves and the filter of distortion and grainy look.

Textual Analysis 'Hey, Soul Sister'-Train

Hey, Soul Sister' is the most successful release from the Contemporary Rock band called Train. It is best known as 'The Nature Song' because of the focus upon paintings within the music video. The band has a different approach their style which was once pop-rock genre and is now more indie-pop, and their unique video. This change has enabled the band to become more prominent in an era where contemporary and quirky are becoming the norm; this would explain why this particular song is their most commercial single and their highest charting song to date. The video for 'Hey, Soul Sister', directed by Matthew Stawski who has shown the generic conventions of a music video adhering to Andrew Goodwin’s Music Video Theory.

The relationship between lyrics and visuals is hard to understand because there is no more of a link than the lyrics literally floating around the screen. The amplification relationship is evident, all though the narrative does not directly convey the lyrics it continues with the theme of love. There is a romance theme with a simple boy meets girl storyline though the lyrics don’t directly state this typical love story, they do enforce an idea of a man being completely captivated by a female, and the visuals do amplify this.

There is an immediate relationship between the music and the visuals, which is consistent throughout the whole of the video. The first cut of the beat is with the walking of the woman and the beating of the drum, however this synchronization quickly changes and the movement of both characters and words follow the rhythm of the ukulele. This helps to keep the mood of the song light and happy, enabling it to show the sweetness of love. However, synchronization is lost when the clips of the band playing is shown, having them move at a faster more natural pace is significant in setting them out from the rest of the video, to ensure they are promoted.
         

Unlike most of Train's other music videos, where the main focus used to be that of the lead singer and the narrative (like there latest song ‘Drive By’), this particular video promotes the whole band even though there are many close-ups of the lead singer. By promoting the band in this way it helps to create a bond of closeness between the band members, continuing with the love theme and also portraying them to the viewers as real. The repeated individual shots of the band is mainly close-ups and medium close-ups, along with medium shots of the whole band are expected conventions of the video as the whole intention of a music video is to promote the artist and the music.

In this video there is an aspect that does not adhere to the stereotypical convey of women where they are objectified as sexual articles, this video does not refer to 'the notion of looking'. Though the male looks like he has power by dressing in black, against a woman who shows weakness dressed in white, it is in fact the woman who exerts dominance throughout the video. This is done with the use of extreme close-ups on different sections of her body at different times in the video, mainly on her face to show a smirk expression which has the effect of making the female seem powerful and threatening. The shots of the male are usually medium close-ups which help the audience to witness the information he is delivering, that being paintings of the emotions he feels for this woman. This enables him to look weaker as he is being portrayed as the most in love. Mid-shots are used also which make him look smaller, and therefore inferior. However, these images are contradicted by the woman following the words, which can be analysed as the male having controlling power over the female. 

With all that has been stated so far, it is clear to see that 'Hey, Soul Sister' is a contemporary music video that, though mainly sticks to generic conventions of promotion, challenges other aspects of music video conventions. However, the unique writing of lyrics being placed throughout the video which has intertextual references to Paramores 'Hallelujah' and Charlotte Sometimes's 'How I Could Just Kill A Man' which both came before 'Hey, Soul Sister' and therefore influenced by them.

This music video is primarily a performance video, with cuts of lip-synching and music playing by the band, however there are snippets of narrative throughout. Despite this though, the narrative has no more depth to the story line than a boy meeting a girl and the falling in love. Simple narrative however is a generic convention of a music video.