While many of the winning videos at the VMA's dealt with messages about love, their videos had questionable accuracy at displaying this theme, and most artists had the same trouble with other themes in their videos. I tried listening to some with ought music, and the following collages of unrelated, seizure inducing videos(one actually had such a disclaimer) could not bring me to the point of their song, even if I had watched it several times over. This does not make for proper communication if your audience becomes confused by images of Zebras crossing through a hangar, even if you have reasonably worthwhile lyrics. One song I found, "Same Love" by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, conveyed their age old theme of love properly, with a new twist, and with deeper ties to equality and acceptance.

The speaker in this video of course is Macklemore who opens his video by juxtaposing a birth with 3 couples, one gay, one straight, one lesbian. They all had images of the spouses speaking with each other, and with them holding hands. This brings them all to the same level, and gives us the message of the song, which is also quite apparent in the title, that all love is the same love, and sexual orientation has nothing to do with it. Race either, but that is a sidenote, even if it is still an important one, on the contemporary issue of equal rights to the LGBT community. The occasion for his writing then was Referendum 74 which would allow gay marriage in Washington state. It did end up passing, so there may be something to be said about the effect of this video, and the power of communication it has. Voter must have been the audience for this video, or any person who has an opinion on this issue. whether his purpose for showing them was to swing votes in Ref 74's favor, or to convince bigots of their stupidity, i'm not sure, it really could go either way. Whatever the purpose, the video was structured quite simply, as a simple love story between two men, and how that relationship progresses over their lives. Macklemore makes no direct reference to who these people are, if they are based on real people at all, although it may be a tribute to his uncle who he mentions is gay twice. These two people serve the purpose of appealing to the human condition, as most people have or will experience such a relationship with another person in their lifetime, and it gets the watcher to see that a gay relationship and gay love is no different than a straight one. Macklemore goes on to sing about other pressing and related themes such as stereotypes, use of words with ought thought, and basic human rights, all of which he relates back to gay marriage. He throws in images of Martin Luther King Jr., and people of all orientations getting married as a bonus to give an overall tone of equality. With it's lyrics, and video that works on it's own, Macklemore and Ryan lewis conveyed their support of gay marriage and Ref 74 with effective communication, the effective of which can be seen(again, no way to tell if it really helped) in the now gay marriage legalized state of Washington.