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.