MUSIC VIDEO ANALYSIS

THE 1975 - GIRLS

LYRICS AND VISUALS

The video style itself portrays the ‘amplified’ style very well, as it contains a lot of hidden messages, and uses different types of imagery to portray the feeling of the song through the characters used in the video. The lyrics talk about girls and their attitudes and feelings in a relationship, and relationships in general. The video slightly contradicts the lyrics, but mainly fits in with the overall theme. The women in the video represent what the song is against; the way that teenage girls are clingy and stereotypical.

At the beginning of the video before the song begins to play, there is some narrative from the band to the production crew disagreeing with the style that has been picked for the music video. They state that it is too ‘pop’, and that the video needs to be in black and white as they are ‘not a pop band’. This shows humour towards the band and addresses their niche audience, who do not think they are a pop band. Whilst this dialogue is running, the shots are all in black and white, backing up what the band are saying. The bands logo then appears, and the music kicks in and we see that the video is in colour, and begins to start in a manner stereotypical to the pop genre. This was used to create irony, and humour for the audience.

MUSIC AND VISUALSThe visuals alongside the music stay in time with the beat of the music, so the editing pace is reasonably steady throughout the video. At the beginning the music fits in with shots of the guitars used at that point of the song, and all we see in hands strumming the notes being heard. Also the first line of the song is sang in a close up shot of the lead singer, but for the second line switches to a long shot of the band with just the lead singer singing. After this, the shots of the band are pretty disjointed, and there is no real pattern to when they are shown playing as a band. The band also are included in the narrative of the video, and are portrayed as unhappy and out of place in the setting they are in.

It is made clear that they are in a set, and it is not made to look realistic. The band are made out to be out of place as this is what they stated in their dialogue at the beginning. It is also to represent how the girls make the band uncomfortable, as they are really stereotypical and Barbie-like, which is what the song states that they don’t like and this is why it doesn’t work out great. It also switches between shots of the band playing the song and lookalike girls playing. This could show that the girls don’t have to be stereotypical, and are only so when actually around boys.

The girls are made out to be stereotypical in many different takes. For example, they are all dressed in skimpy underwear throughout the whole video. There are also shots where the girls are painted out to be common stereotypes, for example the girl driving the car crashes, showing women are bad drivers. Also when the girls are tanning, the girl that is cooking on the BBQ doesn’t look as though she is enjoying it or doing it very well.

REFERENCES The girls themselves during the shot’s when they are outside, look like they are Barbie's, as their actions are very stiff and the clothes they are wearing are very fake, but look perfect. This could be to show the stereotypical view of how girls should look perfect, which most people see when they look at a Barbie.

The style of the music video itself seems to mock all mainstream pop videos that use girls as objects. Although the girls are dressed in skimpy outfits when doing mirror shots of the band playing, it could be seen as that is the way that it is shown that girls can do it too, and that they do not have to be like the girls shown in the narrative.

Phallic imagery is used a lot throughout the video, usually quite abruptly. A shot of a girl looking shocked whilst holding a sausage later on becomes a shot of a girl eating a sausage. When ‘girls’ is being spelt out, it is also wrote with twisted sausage.

The crossings used in the video could also be a reference to the infamous image of the Beatles cross the street. This is a common reference in music videos as it is such an iconic image.

The use of black and white at the beginning of the song is a reference to the majority of indie style music videos, as they are usually done in black and white to make them seem edgy.