Song Choice - The Pretender Analysis

In the end 'The Pretender' got the majority vote for the song choice of our music video. We took it into consideration and all decided to agree that 'The Pretender' is a good choice for our music video.

The song choice that we have chosen is The Pretender. It is is a song by the American alternative rock band Foo Fighters. It was the first single from the group's 2007 album Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace.

The music video ‘The Pretender’ by Foo Fighters shows several features of Andrew Goodwin’s music video theory. The video commences with an aircraft hanger this could be recognised to represent the scale of the band as they are very well received in the music industry.

There are several close ups of the band are used throughout; this is heavily enforced by the record label. It creates a personality for the band and helps them make solid motives that set them apart from other bands in the same genre as them. Low angel shots of Dave Ghrol (Lead singer) and his guitar at the beginning make him look tall and powerful signifying he is the most important member of the band.

Near the end of the video the wall of red behind them explodes and showers the room in a red paint. The red paint could be visually perceived to represent the emotion and anger being the musical composition, but additionally the climax of the video. Visual editing can be visually shown to match that of the tempo close ups of the instruments being played in sync with the music shows the audience that the band can play. This can also be applied to the lip-syncing

Although the video consist of mainly performance, linking together lyrics and visuals creates an idea of a narrative. “I’m what’s right, I’m the enemy” is showing they're going against society and the police in particular. This comes towards to the end of the video showing that whats holding them together has eventually snapped and that he has given up being in ill-mannered towards the police and has deiced to make a stand.

The performers have a wide stance while playing; this is commonly associated with rock music and is often shown in rock videos.  Additionally a tedious feature of music is the appearance of the band, they look messy/scruffy and wear their instruments low on the body this additionally promotes the wide stance they have. A widespread representation in music is a massive hefty reliance on a narrative; rock videos incline to have less of a narrative and more performance in their music videos.