Music Video Analysis 2 P1 (a-f)

Textual Analysis of Music Videos 

Institutional/Reference Information 

I will be analysing ‘Seven Nation Army by ‘The White Stripes - Directors: Alex Courtes and Martin Fougerol

A genre is either a style or category of art, music, or literature. It can be used to inform viewers about what the piece of music entails and could indicate whether they are likely to enjoy it. Genre is used to demonstrate differentiation within music.

The genre that the song falls into would be rock or alternative rock. The characteristics of the video that reflect this include the abrupt cuts and flashing lights, as well as many scenes showing the artists playing their instruments. 

Relationship between Lyrics and Visuals

Overall, the relationship between lyrics and visuals is reasonably small. However at 1:20, we first see skeletons marking in sync with the beat, this matches the name of the song and the first chorus of the song. After the skeletons repeat in every few scenes, the famous instrumental chorus begins to play just after we hear “And the feeling coming from my bones says find a home...” - At 2:00 The marching skeletons (which relates to ‘bones’ in the previous lyrics) return however in a hugely increased number, emphasising the instrumental adding to the power and atmosphere created by the song. 

Also, as the first verse starts, the protagonist (Jack White) increases in size in the video, and is seen to be very large as we hear ‘A seven nation army couldn’t hold me back” - These lyrics and the video coincide as the increase in size shows the power of the artist which is relevant to the lyrics.

Relationship between Music and Visuals

There are not cuts throughout the whole video, and therefore not only does this make the music video a visual masterpiece, it creates a strong, powerful atmosphere whilst listening to the song and watching the video. 

The pace of the song coincides with the visuals, for example, the beginning of the song is reasonably slow paced, and the video matches this pace by slowly zooming into the first object we see on screen.

 At 0:47, the instrumental begins, and immediately the speed of the audio and video speed up, this not only keeps the pace of the visuals, but keeps the viewer enticed and captivated.

Throughout the whole song, we see the video change to every beat of the song, and this is more obvious in the verses, as every single bass drum beat, we see a flash or change in colour, which again keeps the pace of the video the same as the audio. 

Although the song is reasonably slow, and roughly 124 BPM, the directors have produced an aesthetically pleasing visual masterpiece that reflects the lyrics and audio extremely well in relation to the video. 

Close ups of Artist & Star Image Motifs

The video is primarily based on the two members of ‘The White Stripes’, and there only extremely brief moments when the band members cannot be seen on the screen. The focus is to show the artists playing their song whilst incorporating the special effects that cause views to remain enthralled and captivated throughout. The filming has cause the artists to look powerful, and this is extremely fit for purpose with the powerful rock song they have produced, giving the image of high quality and dominance. It has not been made to show the band as perfect and looking fantastic etc, which for example may be used for a boy band, however the video is much more focused on the artists supremacy and musical ability. 

When watching the video, the record label will want to encourage the viewers to purchase or download this song, and this is done by creating an enticing and visually pleasing video. The use of special effects and editing, the directors and ‘XL Recordings’ have created a unique and engaging video that has drawn the attention of millions of fans. (55,556,176 views on YouTube alone)

Intertextual References

Compared to ‘The White Stripes’ video for ‘The Dental Twist’, ‘Seven Nation Army’ is very different, however both videos are reasonably abstract and various filming techniques and editing has been used to create strange visuals to entice viewers. One motif that has been used in both is the use of white stripes, and the colours black, white and red. This is the colours associated with the band and therefore suits the video.

The use of the white stripes and the colours red, black and white in the video is a symbol of the band, as soon as viewers see the stripes in a video, it is likely they will instantly know the video they are watching is by the white stripes, it has been used in various videos, such and ‘Seven Nation Army’, ‘The Dental Twist’, and ‘Icky Thump

Concept

The video is very performance and concept based, however for the duration of the video we see the special effects used which keep the viewers interested. There is no narrative for the video, it is simply the special effects flowing whilst the band perform their song.