Like Oceane, I spent a good part of yesterday watching most of the nominated music videos. Many of the songs I had already heard and liked on the radio had awful videos. I never expected much of Bruno Mars' "Locked out of Heaven," and I counted 10 #Thickes in Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" before I got fed up and closed the video(Be glad you stopped it when you did Oceane, stuffed animals made an appearance). But the video for Rihanna and Mikky Ekko's "Stay" did not do the song justice! Irritated and saddened, I finally stumbled upon "Carry On" by fun.
I had already watched videos by fun., and "Carry On" was already one of my favorite songs. Videos by fun. are unique in the aspect that the video takes time to establish the context of the song and actually tell you a story. The song doesn't start until about a minute into the video. Instead, it started with slow piano music that gave me the feeling of unbearable sadness and pain. The camera pans to Nate Ruess, the head singer, literally picking himself off the ground. The video then cuts to all the members sitting in a room, blankly staring at the ground. Eventually, with great effort, Nate and the others walk out of the building and start to go around New York City. The song starts, and Nate beings to sing. He sings of his failed relationship with his girlfriend, and how lost he felt. They got to a bar to grieve about life (we talked and talked about how our parents will die…).
But he ends up having a great time, and leaves with a positive outlook on life(But I like to think, I can cheat it all…When I was left for dead, I was found..). The lone piano accompaniment is then joined by drums, and guitar, and the song changes from somber to energetic. He then decides to keep going, even if life is painful and hard(No one's ever gonna stop us now…We are shining stars…We are invincible). This is a excellent song because there is a point in everyone's life where they feel they can't move on. "Carry On" is a song that everyone can identify with, and should have won an award at the VMA's.
Thanks Kevin. I had thought that Denis was the only one to write about this video. I guess I was wrong. Let me ask you the same question I asked Denis. The scene in which Nate picks himself up off the ground appears to me to be one of exhaustion rather than "unbearable sadness and pain." He is on the concert stage, right? This changes the focus of the argument.
ReplyDeleteI have a comment for you quite different from the ones I have given your peers. What you write here is more of a summary than an analysis. You have to be careful of just retelling the story, which is what you do here. You might catch yourself doing this if you find yourself using words like "then" and "Eventually" too many times. You use them four times in this post and you could have used them more. The analysis I was hoping for would present a clear purpose and then link parts of the video to that purpose. The closest you come to achieving this is when you explain how fun. starts their videos slowly, first capturing the audience's attention. We are going to get a lot of practice with rhetorical analysis. We ALL have things to work on. You must be careful to avoid summary.