Good Music Videos

Just linking a couple of music videos which are pretty interesting, unusual or just memorable. well, i think so...

The Eels - My Beloved monster



Blur - Coffee and TV (the milk carton is sooo cute)



Bjork - It's all so quiet, directed by Spike Jones. It's just a bit mad, and the umbrellas are wicked.


Overall I think the song is illustrative - it fits with the lyrics (ie putting had to lips when 'sshh'), and links love with happiness (as we would expect) through dancing, laughing and big, bold colours.

There is a sense of narrative: there is a prelude to the piece where she is washing her face which starts the story. The narrative is basically, everything normal around her turns really weird and mad as soon as she starts singing about being in love. For example, she is leaning on a bin, which starts dancing with her when she sings 'when you fall in love'. HOWEVER, I think the use of conforming to many conventions of the 'musical' genre undermines the narrative, producing a more performance-based video. She sings along to all of the lyrics and dances when the music builds to a climax. The conventions she complies to are people bursting into song (she seems as though she's bursting into song because she was being normal and washing her face before hand), normal people joining in and dancing with her, everyone randomly knowing what moves to do at the same time even though they've 'never met'.

This also gives a sense of inter-textuality - it's just like any musical films we've seen. She's tap dancing and singing on the street like in 'singing in the rain', and there's a big ensemble dance and she dances on a car, just like in 'fame'.

There are many CUs of the artist, especially when she has a very intimate shot of her singing slowly, her hair blowing gracefully, and she's looking very beautiful. All of the shots of her however are not sexual, she looks small, cute, feminine and happy. The camera is following her the whole time, she's like the main character in a film.

Voyeurism: not so much people watching her, but the fact that all the dancers join in WITH her suggests that she's cool.

Mcfly - 5 colours in her hair



The genre of this music is essentially pop, boyband and the video conforms to the typical generic conventions of this type of video; the group perform, they are good looking, fun, up to mischief, young, and their main interst is concerning a girl.

The relationship between the lyrics and the visuals is illustrative (the girl who they are singing about in the video complies with the girl in the lyrics, for example she's a bit different, trendy and has five colours in her hair). However, the relationship isn;t literal, the lyrics talk about how she shaves off her hair and can't deal with her popularity at school, but in the video she just joins in with the band and dances around with them.

The relationship between the music and the visuals is also illustrative, the music is energetic and fast paced and the guitars have a very surfer-like riff which is included in the visuals. The performance of the music and the music are in sync, as well as the use of lots of movements and edits which are in conjuncture with the rhythm.

There are plenty of visuals hooks which are always CUs of the band members. There is a notion of looking in this video; the girl is watching them perform on the telly, and the band have lots of fans dancing around them and watching them. I noticed one intertextual reference; the video is about this very colourful modern girl who is stuck with her family who appear to live in the black and white world of the 60s. When her and the band jump into the telly the old BBC image comes up which was always used when there was a technical fault, but this time it has mcfly surfing in the middle.

The video is performance based, but there's an ongoing narrative of the girl who is bored and stuck at home, she's then saved by the McFly boys and she joins their performance by dancing with them.