The 1975 - Girls - Music Video Analysis

A Detailed Analysis of "Girls'' by The 1975

"Girls" is the fourth single released from The 1975's self titled debut album. The music video was directed by Adam Powell and released on the 23rd of October 2013. The four minute long video follows both a narrative and a performance by the band throughout, which is a typical indie genre characteristic according to the theorist Andrew Goodwin.

"Girls" opens with a wide shot, showing the band (clad in all black clothing) in their entirety and also the continuous motif of the bands logo of a rectangle which is featured on their album, previous music videos and merchandise. The 1975's use of their logo throughout their media products conforms to Goodwin's theory that ''artists may develop motifs which recur throughout their work''. thus giving The 1975 a recognised and iconic visual style.

Diegetic dialogue is spoken before the actual song starts to form the narrative of the video which relies on the band not wanting to film a 'pop music video' and shows frontman Matthew Healy disagreeing with the directors vision of how the video should look, "the whole scenarios not really what we're about, It needs to be black and white for a start." The bands drummer (George Daniel) agrees with Matthew and confidently states ''we're not a pop band.'' Matthew and George say this because black and white has been a recurring feature and a continuos motif of all of The 1975's  music videos up to the release of "Girls." 

The video then cuts to the bands famous rectangular logo and a static non-diegetic sound can be heard before cutting to the director, Adam Powell's clapper board which is the only part of the shot in focus and this establishes the bands first breakout into colour. The bands rectangular logo then appears again to display bright flowers reading the song title "Girls." The use of the flowers visualising the song title conforms with Goodwin's theory of music videos visuals having a relationship with the lyrics. The video then goes back to stereotypical indie genre music video characteristics as several fast paced close-ups of the band members playing their instruments to match the opening beat of the song.

Throughout the video, close ups of the lead singer show him looking moody and disinterested. These close-ups of Matthew conform to another theory of Andrew Goodwin's, which states that ''the demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close-ups of the artist''. This creates the idea that the company want Matthew Healy to be identified as "The 1975" to it's audience. This is a stereotypical feature for frontmen of bands from the indie genre. An example of this can be found in "Kathleen" by Catfish and the Bottlemen which only displays close-ups of the lead singer Van McCann.

The video then proceeds to showing four scantily clad women who take the place of each individual band  member and form the videos narrative. The video then uses fast paced cuts to switch between long shots of both the women and the band. The switch gives across the impression that the director has used binary opposites. In this sense, the women represent pop culture as they are wearing minimal clothing like how most women are shown in mainstream pop videos. Whereas the band remain the same and although the video is now in colour, the bands dark clothing has not changed. Therefore, the females represent the pop culture which the band don't want to become whilst also playing a relevant part to what the song is about, girls, thus making the video an illustrative one as the video features what the song is about.

"Girls" conforms to Goodwin's theory of the music video showing a ''relationship between the lyrics and visuals". The director does this by showing the main model who takes on the role of the lead singer blowing out a cake displaying a "17" candle during the lyrics, ''she can't be what you need if she's seventeen.''

Goodwin's theory of voyeurism and the notion of looking is evident in the music video. The models are instantly sexualised as they are scantily clad and move in a suggestive way. However, the notion of looking is only displayed once as throughout the video the band ignore the models and continue performing the song but one shot shows one of the models sat on the drummers knee, he however continues to play his instrument.

Although ''girls'' does feature a link between the lyrics and the visuals, there's also parts in the video where the dialogue displayed through subtitles does not match the song. Instead, the subtitles link to the narrative side of the video and show the band making fun of the directors vision. The video does display the song title throughout.