Music Video Analysis:Young Guns ‘Bones’

Young Guns are a British rock band from Buckinghamshire, who are formed of 5 members. They had released their first album ‘All our Kings

are Dead’ in July 2010.

Genre CharacteristicsThe genre characteristics for indie rock bands, are generally the generic performance based videos, where the band is mainly shown playing their instruments and singing. Sometimes there is some amplified images which cut in between the shots of the band themselves.

Relationship between lyrics and visuals.According to Goodwin’s theory there is a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals within a music video. They can either be illustrative, contradictory, or amplifying. The music video for Young Guns ‘Bones’, is a contradictory video as the onscreen images do not have any relation to the music and the lyrics. The main shots are of the band members in an empty warehouse playing the instruments and singing. However there are also some shots of another character dancing, this still however has no relation to the lyrics within the song. The music video starts off with very dark

close up shots of the bands members in an empty warehouse. This is a very typical scene for indie rock bands within their music videos. There are various close ups not only of the band members, however also their musical instruments. This is used to emphasize their status as a band which play their own music.

There is then a big emphasis on the lead singer when he starts to sing, however there is also then a shot of the whole band. It is as though all the close ups have been pieced together , the various parts which make up the band (instruments and members) come together to show the final product which is the whole band.At the beginning there isn’t a relation between the lyrics and the visuals, the video takes a very generic form of what many indie rock videos are like. However the onscreen actions have been edited to the beat of the music. Like the footsteps go with the beat of the drums.However when the lyrics start another character is introduced within the music video. When the lyrics ‘down under the night sky, I lay and wait’ are sang there is a shot of a girl under the sky looking up. This is amplified where the lyrics and the images don’t exactly show the same thing however there are similarities.

As the lyrics progress they again have less relation to the onscreen images. We then get shown another setting in an empty, trashed building where we are shown the female character who is alone.

The next image of the female character again alone in the building is shown in the lyrics ‘been crushed by it’s weight’. This is an amplified image for the lyrics because it shows her distressed and alone, which could be the effects of being emotionally ‘crushed by its weight’.

Again there is an amplified image, when the lyrics ‘I’ve seen down the end of the road’ and the image onscreen is the female character looking down the end of the road from a high rise building.

Demands of the Record Label.

Now days the demands from the record label are not as high as they used to be. In previous years the artist was bound to the label, with no freedom to express themselves as an artist, they had to do whatever it took for their music to sell to the public. However now days artists have more freedom, as they become more independent within the record label. For example Young Guns had started off as an unsigned band. They toured and produced their debut EP ‘Mirrors’. This gained them publicity, which then led them to being signed by ‘Redbull’ to produce their first full length album ‘All Our Kings Are Dead’. Now as they have brought themselves to success the label provides them with more flexibility within their own music.