Analysing Paramore Music Videos

Video 1: Misery Business

I think this video is brilliant and really speaks volumes through the narrative story of it, the colours used and the emotion put into it. It’s directed by Shane Drake who has also directed Decode along with other Paramore videos. This shows that they obviously feel comfortable with him and feel he will get the best result and bring the best out of them.

There is a mix of a narrative story and performance footage in the video, but it’s not live tour footage like we can see in the video for Careful. This song is off the album Riot! And you can tell this really obviously because the set for the performance footage is a black floor and background with Riot! written in white messy style font that matches the one seen on the front of the album cover and it’s also written once in orange too which is the same as the album also. The background looks really effective because it’s black and white so the band really stand out against it. They are strongly advertising the album with the similar art being their background.

The outfits they wear really fit the genre of pop/punk. They are all wearing black but with red, orange and yellow so it really stands out (Hayley’s hair also matches this with it being bright orange in the video). These type of colours usually symbolise fire, so this could mean they are showing how fierce they are and passionate – this links with the title of the album ‘Riot’ an outburst of strong emotion. The outfits throughout the performance footage is very punk – Hayley is wearing zebra print tights with a different colour for each leg, showing she is different.

There are clips of the band head-banging and jumping around when the guitar solo kicks in and this is very typical of a pop/punk bands videos. The camera work and editing is very interesting in this piece, as they are appropriate to the style of the song. The song is very fast and so there are very quick cuts so there is a flow and the camera clips fit with the song. I think if the cuts were too slow and stayed focused on something for too long, it wouldn’t work very well because the editing would be disjointed from the style of the song. Having said this, there are lots of close-ups of Hayley’s face, but this works because her facial expressions are important as the song has a strong message.

Something else that is really interesting about the video is the narrative that tells a story. It’s set in a school (which immediately gives the impression that there will be ‘drama’). We first see a group of cheerleaders stood in a doorway and there is a very subtle message with the word ‘punk’ written on the wall. A girl bursts through them and walks through in a bright blue dress with a lot of makeup on and looking very confident. We know from the start that she will link in with the lyrics and some of the story does too. She’s so arrogant as she struts through the corridors and one of the lyrics is ‘I never meant to brag’ and I think this is appropriate. I think the spiteful girl in the video depicts the girl mentioned in the lyrics, because there are links to it. Hayley sings ‘when I thought he was mine she caught him by the mouth’ and in the video she kisses another girls boyfriend just to be spiteful. This could portray something that has happened in Hayley’s life in the way that she’s been with someone and then lost them but ‘waited eight long months’ until they were set free, when she got them back.

I think there is a message in the song that the band really don’t agree with being fake and not being true to who you are because Hayley sings ‘Looking as innocent as possible to get to who they want’ but also says ‘I refuse, I refuse, I refuse’. This links to Hayley wiping a cloth against the camera as if it is the girls face wiping all her makeup away, we then see her with it all smudged and the character as a vulnerable girl. The band don’t show any sympathy though, again this could be relevant to something in their own life.

With regards to the conventions of the pop/punk genre, when the band come into the narrative story in the school, they are wearing really casual clothes – just jeans or shorts and t-shirts, which is often seen in these types of music videos.

The lighting is very bright, especially in the school, but also during the performance footage despite the fact they are surrounded by black – there are big lights making it bright that sometimes flash to get a varied effect to the video.