Music, Lyrics and Visuals - the relationship

In todays lesson we listened to the song 'No rest' by dry the river and expressed our initial ideas of what we thought the music video of the song would look like. We next had a class discussion about our ideas and analysed the lyrics.

My initial idea-
The initial thoughts I wrote down whilst I was listening to the song were:

Indie
Depressing
Sad love song
Pleading for love
Gig image
Male indie band
Quite rock and roll genre'd
Overall my initial thoughts on what the music video would look like were a male orientated indie band playing this song at a gig. The narrative seems to be about a man pleading for love from a women who he lost.



The class' initial ideas-
There would be a wedding, flashbacks of the main singers life, street performances, the lead singer regrets a break up so stalks the girl to get her back, choreography in a barn, binary opposites of dancing dinosaurs in a field contrasting with a quiet campfire, hazy performance with an audience, the lead singer walking down an everlasting corridor with photos of a relationship with some cracked photos.In today's lesson we listen to the song No Rest by Dry the River and created ideas of what we thought the music video would look like. We then had a class discussion about our ideas and analysed the lyrics.

Lyrics analysis-
"No Rest"

I used to be a king alone 

(used = past tense - looking back) (king = power over others, capitalism, in control)

Like Solomon or Rehoboam

Ancient kings
And in the eaves, the Corvidae
Did jealous keep my picture frames
And everything did oxidate in place.

Negative

But then you came, a single cell

(came = past tense)
With astrolabe and carousel
And algebra and symmetry

(Confusion, disorientation = complicated imaginary)
And none of this was lost on me

(lost = alone, lonely)And I could see how still I’d been before
(still = calm)

If I don’t eat, I don’t sleep at all
Like limbs in procession,
Like so many birds

(birds= indie, nature, calm, freedom)Stampeding like oxen,
Our hearts are a herd

I loved you in the best
I loved you in the best way possible
I loved you in the best

Did you see the light in my heart? (optimism)
Did you see the sweat on my brow?
Did you see the fear in my heart?
Did you see me bleeding out? (struggling)

I loved you in the best
I loved you in the best way possible
I loved you in the best way possible
I loved you in the best way possible
I loved you in the best…

After analysing the lyrics, they confirmed to me that the song was about a sad love story and that the lead singer was struggling and very confused.

Actual video - 

After watching the music video and comparing it with my initial thoughts, they were in complete contrast. This music video is a concept as the visuals do not match the lyrics, there is no performance or narrative involved. When watching the music video, I now realise that the soundtrack is too slow and calm for a gig environment/performance music video.

From doing this task, it had given me more of an ability to visualise what a song would look like if it was a music video. This technique is useful when choosing the song for my music video as we will be choosing a song with no music video - so we have to make up the visuals.

I feel with a music video the visuals need to match the genre, for example, if the song has a genre of pop - the visuals must be fun and exciting to match the upbeat genre. With our music video, we plan to match the tone of the music with visuals which match.