The Enemy- Sing When You’re In Love

Released from album, Music For The People, in June 2009.

http://www.youtube.com/user/TheEnemy#p/u/0/8Mqj6P4F2Ws

What Is The Song About?• As far as it is possible to tell, the lyrics don’t tell a story but instead

appear to be speaking out to someone, perhaps the singers love or someone in need of support. There is an attempt to portray an optimistic image that even if everything around you is falling apart, no matter where you are, you should keep singing – both when you ’in’ or ’out of love’. Singing here being an act of strength and positivism.

• Similiarly to the song Ooh La, by The Kooks, previously analysed, there is the implication that the world is a cruel and harsh place- ‘a concrete jungle’ and ‘broken home’. Although instead of telling the story of someone that gave up, it encourages the need to carry on through all the difficulties, e.g. ‘Sing in your bedroom when you go home, through your broken door to your broken home’

What Type Of Video?• The video is a combination of narrative and performance.• Illustrative key moments- Lyrics: ‘On dance floors from London to Liverpool’/busy dance floor

shown.

• ‘Out on the street..’/shot of key characters waiting in street.

‘Sing in your bedroom’/shot of boy sat on bed in his bedroom, girl in bed.

‘Sing to yourself and the bottom of a glass’/shot of boy drinking from glass, bottom of cup shown.

• Video although not directly illustrative is amplifying in the message presented in the lyrics. For example the narrative follows a day in the life of a group of friends in 1960’s Mod Britain. At roughly 3mins into the video we see a girl leave a club and run into the street, clearly distressed because we see her in the bed of another boy than the one it is implied is her boyfriend. The boy that is her boyfriend follows her into the street and confronts her gently. There is tension and upset between the two initially, reflecting the ‘out of love’ and trouble. It later cuts to the two in an embrace, smiling. This is then representative of being ‘in love’ after having ‘sung’ through the problems and upset they were faced with previously, an example of how the text is amplifying the meaning of the song.

• Finally, as expected from a video from the Indie/Alternative genre, the band are shown performing through the duration of the video. This firstly meets the expectations of the ‘independent’ music genre, as it shows the band playing their own instruments and singing their own songs. Secondly it meets the needs of their audience who are attracted to image-based bands. The band are shown on several occasions dressed in dark toned, tailored, fashionable clothes. In correlation with this, the mod theme of the video shows young people (aged roughly around 19) in clothes that were fashionable of the time.