Specific Genre Music Video Analysis

Eliot McFarlane

Who to look at?

My group’s chosen song is Zombie, which isobviously performed by a full band with a femalesinger. I’ve been looking at British bands from the90s who consist of a similar set up, mostly withfemale singers. The mood in some videos may bedifferent, but the genre of music is the same. Themain conventions of the genre are distorted electricguitars and a rhythmic bassline, and I have foundsongs that feature this.

Radiohead – Anyone Can Play Guitar

• This song, from the band’s lesser known first album: Pablo Honey (1993) is different from their later work as it leans more on the basic five piece band sound, and does not feature the electronic samples that Radiohead adopted later in the decade. I think the distorted guitars, especially the sustained chords in the intro are reminiscent of the beginning of Zombie.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Di2d7-rsdUI

Genre Characteristics The video is a performance with a small amount of concept. It clearly exhibits genre characteristics

through the use of the long shot depicting the band playing in a dried up swimming pool. It is typical of videos of this genre to feature a performance element as there is an entire band for the audience to see, in a video for just a singer it is likely there would be more to occupy the time, ie; dancing or narrative. Like many videos of the same genre Anyone Can Play Guitar is not clean cut, in the sense that it is full of footage that is sped up, slowed down, footage that appears up-side-down on the screen, all put together in a fast edit that throws the viewer about and gives the performance a live and active feel, this and the concept in the video make it more interesting to watch than just a performance. The mise en scene in the video is characteristic of the genre, the band is not particularly dressed up, they appear in baggy flannel shirts and jeans, a typical look in the early 1990s. The sets glamorous either, one being the bottom of a swimming pool and another a worn looking room with a chandelier. The idea of an empty swimming pool as a performance area has recurred in the genre and can be seen in a lot of music videos.

Demands Of The Record Label It is unclear in this video if the record label had many

demands, with this type of music and especially in the age the industry was entering into the record labels didn’t have as much power over a band as they did a solo artist. The video does feature many close up’s of Thom Yorke, the frontman and face of the band. I also noticed an especially prominent sticker on a guitar advertising the album the song appears on.

Relationship Between Lyrics And Visuals • There are not many obvious links between the lyrics and the visuals in this

video, there are more subtle references to the intended meaning of the song in the form of intertextual reference. With no narrative there is only the occasional shot depicting lyrical meaning.

• When Yorke sings: “Grow my hair” the edit shows us two shots of him holding his hair, one while performing, the other in the room with the chandelier.

• Seconds later when Jim Morrison is mentioned for the first time (the subject of the song) we are shown a revolving dummy with Jim Morrison’s face on it. The dummy is underwater, tying the shot together with the swimming pool/submerged motif.

• Lastly, throughout the video we see a lizard with “King” written on it, it is either crawling around on it’s own or being held by the band. The song is about Jim Morrison appearing on stage before the existence of The Doors after being requested to pretend to play guitar in the place of an ex-bandmember, thus the name: Anyone Can Play Guitar. “Lizard King was a nickname for Jim Morrison.

“Lizard

Relationship Between Music And Visuals

• There is no especially significant relationship between the music and the visuals in this video.

• The video is edited so that when Thom Yorke sings the first line we are shown an extreme close up of his mouth and lips moving and the same for Johnny Greenwood (Guitarist) making the distorted noises at the beginning.

Motif Of Looking/Voyeurism

There is nothing in this video to imply the notion of looking, the band are the only people that appear in this video.

There is no voyeuristic treatment of the female body in the video, not that it is common within the genre.

Intertexual Reference• You could say the concept element of this video is the intertextual

reference to Jim Morrison. Throughout the video we see frontman, Thom Yorke wearing a leather coat and sunglasses, a visual reference to Morrison. And most significantly, the opening shot, a medium close up of Yorke spreading his arms in a baggy shirt in front of the pool wall. Projected onto the wall are images of fire. Perhaps linking to the lyric: “If London burns”. This shot is a direct intertexual reference to The Door’s music video for L.A. Woman.

Sleeper - Inbetweener

• This song greatly differs in mood and subject to Zombie however the band consists of the same set up and I consider it to be of the same, if not a very similar genre. Being a British band from the same era, I can assume the video for Inbetweener would strike some generic similarities to a video for Zombie.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Y63UIj48xs

Generic Characteristics• This video shares many of the generic characteristics the Radiohead video

possesses, the long shots showing the whole band, close up’s of instruments being played, however, the lead vocalist in Sleeper seems to be more prominent in the video than Thom Yorke was in the Radiohead one. I think around 70% of the video for Inbetweener consists of close up’s and medium close up’s of the singer. This may be significant in that a female singer appears more often than a male one, although the two bands dynamics and commercial images differ and perhaps the singer of Sleeper is a more recognisible “face” of the band than Thom Yorke is for Radiohead. In the case of Radiohead, Johnny Greenwood and his guitar style are almost/if not as representative of the band as a whole, and so this may make it less necessary to feature Thom Yorke as much in music videos.

• The video also contains the same kind of seemingly random shots that appears in Anyone Can Play Guitar and many video’s from the same genre.

• The video is mostly performance with a small amount of concept. This is common within videos of this genre.

Demands Of The Record Label• I think the record label may have demanded

many shots of the lead singer as she seems to be the crux of the band, as I mentioned in the slide before. Other than that I do not see many signs of the demands of the record label.

Relationship Between lyrics And Visuals• This video is very interesting in terms of lyrics and visuals, the setting and

theme of the video: the supermarket/shopping almost contradicts the meaning of the song. It also, in a way, amplifies it by giving it new symbolic meaning, taken from the first line: “Shopping for kicks…” the director set the video in a supermarket. This took the euphemism and spun it on its head, taking it literally, the meaning remains the same, and is expressed via the deconstructed simile. It is a nice, PG spin on a song about brief “romantic” relationships.

Relationship Between Music And Visuals

• There is no extremely significant relationship between music and visuals, the is the standard cutting to a close up of a guitar during an interesting riff or solo or a drum kit during a drum roll but other than that the visuals do not work with the music in any unique way.

• It is important to show instruments being played in this genre as it is an entire band being presented or sold and not just a singer.

Motif Of Looking/Voyeurism

• Again, with this genre of music voyeurism is not common in music videos, the female singer is on screen more than anything else but in no particularly outlandish sexual way.

• There are no references to looking or voyeurism.

Intertexual Reference• Like in the Radiohead video, you could say the

concept is the intertexual reference to Supermarket Sweep, with Dale Winton, who appears in the video, furthering the theme of the supermarket and shopping as a metaphor for sleeping around.