Analysing Music Video, Andrew Goodwin Theory

Andrew Goodwin, had a theory about music videos, his theory were:

• Relationship between lyrics and the visuals
• Relationship between music and the visuals 
• Particular music genres may have their own music video style and iconography 
• Lots of close ups of artist or artists 
• The artist or artists develop their own star iconography 
• Likely to be reference to voyeurism 
• Likely to be intertextual references. 

To test this theory i am looking at two different kinds of videos, from Indie rock to pop. The first video i have looked at is 

Taylor Swift: You Belong With Me

Taylor Swift is, a pop country type.In this video it's very intertextual of the typical american teenage film, she appears to be the sweet innocent girl  who is in love with her best friend who has a girlfriend who is a cheerleader and is the typical 'bitch' character. We are instantly wanting Taylor to win the guy.  The Lyrics match with the video in few examples 'your on the phone with your girlfriend' the boy is on the phone, 'sitting on a park bench.' The video is cut to match the speed with the music, when the music kicks in the video appears to become alot more quicker then the slower parts, at the ball game, it appears to be a lot faster, then when they are sat on the bench. During the end of the video we see a intertextual reference to the Cinderella story, all through the video she is nerdy and unnoticeable until the end when everyone notices her. The typical 'heart throb' is the actor who plays the love interest in Hannah Montana, this is also a intertextual of a High School based American film. We are looking through the window of Taylor Dancing in her room, we appear to be sneaking into her life and seeing how she is like outside from performing. We also see lots of close ups of her so we are aware she is important. Her style iconography is sweet and innocent, this image is shown in all of her videos. 

Keane Somewhere Only We Know

This is a different genre, it's soft rock, Indie. The artists Keane, so the image is certainly not a sweet innocent feel like Taylor swift. The video starts with them walking backstage out of the concert, so we already feel like we are following them out of the concert on their journey. We get a animé reference as we see one of the character sitting in the taxi with them, this is the CGI animation character of the video. They are singing very soulfully, sitting down and not participating in a lot of excitement movements, they wear casual normal clothes, in a British environment grime, and damp. They travel to somewhere no one else knows about, which matches with the lyrics 'somewhere only we know.'  The visuals of trees and rivers are shown, when mentioned in the song. When the song, becomes slightly different in speed, the shadows on the trees move quickly around. We see the close ups and medium shots of them preforming. The bands image is more indie, soulful and deeper meaning, we see this in the videos with the passion of the singer and the instrument players, this is shown in most of their videos. The theory is used a lot in this video, we even see a private performance which makes the style, a typical rock indie as with the rock we usually see the artists perform.

Conclusion 
With looking at both of these different type of video and music styles, the Andrew Goodwin theory seems to be showing up in videos, even from something completely different from pop to indie rock. This suggests it is popular in most videos however, some videos do not follow this theory, Lady Gaga, Michael Jackson (Do You Remember The Time) It's not fully decided whether to follow all of this method in our video or just a few of them, such as the close ups and matching lyrics and video.  Even though, the Taylor Swift video is following the Andrew Goodwin theory, Keane isn't following the theory. However, the video of Keane aims for a more deeper meaning with symbols for example the falling leaf and the shadows on the trees.  It's clear that the lyrics and visuals is used a lot in the  music videos. With the song style we have chosen, which is hip hop/dance/r'n'b type we will do further research on the same genre of music videos to see if we can get a good indication on how the music videos for the genre generally looks like.