Research - Music Video

The Wonder Years - 'Came Out Swinging'

This is the video for The Wonder Years' song 'Came Out Swinging' from their recent album. I absolutely love this video in terms of narrative, little details and the way that it has been edited. I love how the narrative has relation to the lyrics of the song. The ghost costume refers to the line 'I spent this year as a ghost' and shows the person running around and misbehaving as if they cannot be seen. This also happens when the band sing 'Been on a steady fast food diet' on the second verse and the video cuts to a clip of McDonalds. I also really like how the spray painting scenes have been cut up so we see little snippets of what it says but can't quite tell what is being written until it is revealed at the end.  

The editing is to a very high standard on this video. I like how there are moments when something happens to a big beat, such as the first beat after the build up where the ghost pushes over the guy on roller skates and near the end after a slow part theres a crash where the drummer hits the lightbulb with his cymbal which carries on with band members breaking the lightbulbs. 

 The editing is also effective when the song slows down just before the chorus comes in. To fit with the slower pace of the music they have chosen to fades the two clips together instead of just cutting with no transition effect between. This works well with the lower tempo and fits the mood. There is also a long shot held of the broken lightbulb fizzling out and smoking. This settles the mood back down now the track has ended and shows the broken lightbulb as a result of what has just happened.

Overall, the music videos performance and narrative both suit the genre of music quite well by showing misbehaviour/rebellion typical to the rock genre.