R+P Post 18: Analysis of my track's lyrics and instrumentation

One of the first things we did after finalising our track choice was create a rough lyrics sheet for the song (as we could not find a good one online) and then use this sheet to make notes on our own analyses of the track.

To start, we simply went through all the lyrics and wrote down things that occurred to us. As we went through, we noticed the general themes of nostalgia and closeness with somebody, as well as quite a few lines which we decided to interpret as references to various pieces of old but well-loved media in keeping with these themes. These include the lines "the morning I was dancing in the rain" which we linked to the movie 'Singing in the Rain," and "Lucy in the sky, smiling down" which we linked to the Beatle's album 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' which contains the song 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.' Lines like "you took my hand" and "together forever," as well as the chorus "don't wake me up, I'm having a sweet dream, about you and me and a slot machine," all point towards the love side of the song's themes. We will try to visually interpret these lines and themes in the video by having the lead singer exploring a nostalgic dream in which she meets the characters from these pieces of media, while mourning a lost love and looking for another.

Analysing the track like this was beneficial as it really helped us cement the ideas floating around in our heads just from listening to the song and unknowingly absorbing the themes and atmosphere without thinking about any of the song's ideas in detail.

One page from one of our sets of lyrics notes. This page shows quite a lot of our ideas, some of which we will likely carry forward and some of which we won't. Getting them out on paper really helped us weed out the bad ideas and identify the good. Note in particular where we have picked out certain lines are references to certain pieces of media, in an almost post-modern way in that the video will contain intertextual references to them. Click to enlarge.

We also looked at how the lyrics and music interacted as part of this process. This helped us to build a basic structure for the video, that rises and falls and climaxes and so on along with the music and even the ideas present in the lyrics. One good example of this kind of analysis and planning comes near the end of the song- the music really picks up at every chorus, and we made sure to include exciting bits of narrative and performance through our interpretation of the lyrics in these sections. At the end of the song, there is quite a soft and less dynamic section relative to the rest of the song, where the singer repeats "together forever" for a while. After this, the chorus kicks back in for the song's climax- we thus decided to put a large party scene here, one that thrusts the characters from the narrative and performance sections together, along with a mish-mash of other characters from popular media, in an energetic representation of the music.

Analysing the song musically as well as lyrically was a big help, as it guided our interpretation of the song as a whole- simply looking at the end chorus without music doesn't present much interest, as lyrically it is identical to the other choruses. Musically, however, there is a slow build-up and huge finale which we were able to work into our plans.

Another extract from one of our song analysis sheets. As you can see, the slower "together forever" section has been marked off, and the following chorus has been assigned a party scene. The lyrical structure of the song and the musical structure of the song work together to provide many opportunities for interesting interpretation. Click to enlarge.

Another key way we analysed the song is through use of theory. We looked to the work of Carol Vernallis- she says that the music video is a visual response to the music itself. We were already on the right track, in that we were looking at the music and lyrics and figuring out how to interpret and represent them visually. We looked further into her ideas, and have decided to try and have the editing and camera work with the music to further this link between the music and its video- for example, when the chorus kicks in, there might be a cut to a much wider or closer shot, to have a large visual impact to go alongside the musical impact. The ideas of Railton and Watson helped us during the phase where we were considering the structure, camera, and editing of the video, in that we know we must tell an overall story with our video's narrative alongside the necessary editing and interpretation of specific lines- things outside of editing and camera, such as mise-en-scene, can aid in visual narration.

We also looked at the encoding and decoding model of Stuart Hall, which states that meaning in music and music videos is polysemic- i.e. different people will see different signs and interpret the video differently. Thus, when dealing with our song's themes, we had to be aware of what our dominant reading is and try to guide people towards it, while no alienating people who interpret the video differently. The story of our video is that the lead singer has suffered a bad break up, and after going through a dream of her past, she goes on to find a new love. We have tried to convey the idea that you need to move forwards past your memories in order to discover new things, but in Hall's model we have also allowed for the negotiated reading (indulge in the past but don't let it block you from experiencing the future) and even the oppositional reading (living in the past is a good idea sometimes and can help you feel better about present and future problems.) All of this should add extra depth to our video.

A brief overview of some of the different readings we realised people could have of our video- they all go over the same narrative, themes, and certain specific lyrical interpretations, yet they all offer slightly different views on the video as a whole. We don't want any interpretation to feel wrong, and we want our video to have some depth for the audience to explore. Click to enlarge.