Lego House – Ed Sheeran

Annabel Street

• Ed Sheeran is a 23 year old, English, singer-songwriter. ‘Lego House’ was his third single from his debut album ‘+’ and peaked at no.5 on the UK singles chart.

• As we see from this medium close up shot, the actor Rupert Grint is portrayed as Sheeran. This may come across as shocking and unexpected to fans as it is very unconventional. Music videos include the artist lip syncing to their own song, so this video breaks conventions. However, the use of Rupert Grint is interesting as he looks very similar to Sheeran, both with scruffy, ginger hair. This means that people watching who aren’t fans probably wouldn’t realise that it is not Sheeran, making the situation even more unconventional.

• Acting as Sheeran, Grint takes part in activities we would expect an artist to do, such as writing out lyrics and spending time in his tour bus.

• He is wearing a hoodie and jeans, a very casual outfit, which is conventional for singer-songwriters as they don’t often wear interesting, eye-catching outfits.

• This video reflects Andrew Goodwin’s theory of matching the visuals with the lyrics. For example, as we hear ‘if you’re broken I will mend ya’ we see Grint fixing a Lego helicopter (this also reflects the title of the video – ‘Lego’). Another example is when we hear ‘frame it and put you on a wall’, we see him hanging up a frame.

• Like I mentioned earlier, he takes part in activities you would expect a singer-songwriter to be doing. We see him with an acoustic guitar – a very stereotypical instrument for the genre of music.

• Towards the end of the video, Grint is on stage in front of a crowd of fans which is something you would expect to see an artist do in their video. We see him from behind and so we see are able to see the audience scream as he walks onto the stage – this is again expected.

• We are then shown what picture was in the frame from earlier on in the video. As the camera slowly pans round, it is revealed to us that it is a picture of Ed Sheeran. This is an amusing concept.

• We then see an extreme long shot of Grint being tackled by security guards. This is obviously not expected as it makes the audience question why he was there and why he’s being taken away.

• It is then slowly revealed to us that Grint is just playing an overly obsessed fan. It becomes clear that the earlier events in the video were just him stalking the real Ed Sheeran. We understand that he has made a scrap book based on the artist and the lyrics he was writing out were copied from Ed Sheeran’s CD.