I CAN SEE YOU

MV ANALYSIS

I Can See You is a song released by Taylor Swift during her album Re-Release of Speak Now. It is one of Swift's original songs that had not been released, also known as the Vault tracks and surprise, this one comes with a music video.

The music video is narrative-based and could be further categorised by Andrew Goodwin's relationship of the visuals with the lyrics as disjuncture since the visuals don't have any direct connection with the songs. The music video, however, as many of Taylor Swift's other music videos contain references to her past work, features a lot of references to other Taylor Swift music videos from the Speak Now original album; thus, it is a post-modern work of intertextuality. These references are understood mainly by her fans, so the target audience of this Music video is swifties and fans who are aware of her original album Speak Now and its music videos. Steve E. Carlsson would categorise the MV as Televised Bard as it features both the narrative visuals and a performer.

The music video follows a colour pallet of green, orange and purple focusing heavily on cinematography. The shots are beautifully composed following the rule of thirds, symmetry and contrasting lighting.

The shots are cut to the beat, fast-paced and full of action. The Vault lighting shows it guarding the treasure of the Speak Now album, hung up in a room filled with marked walls to count days spent in what could be said to be Taylor's prison.

The music video borrows techniques from heist movies inspired as it follows in the narrative of Joey King and Taylor Lautner coming to rescue Taylor Fearless from the Vault. We have the stereotypical hacker from heist movies, and this is also reference #1 to the star girl collecting money for her University in the music video for 'Mean'. Reference# 2 Joey King, who also initially featured in 'Mean'. When she touches the keypad to enter the password, there is an electric shock, and it is not any colour other than purple. Purple is the colour of speech now used in most of the album's promotional material.

Taylor hides multiple references to her past work for her fans to find, as she calls them 'easter eggs'. This gamifies the viewing experience for the fans following her work and is an intentional reminder that her work is the same. She reclaims ownership over her albums through the narrative and easter eggs.

Jenkin’s theory of fandom is very much applicable to Swift’s music as fans seem to form their identity and find an alternative social community through it while interacting with the music videos through these easter eggs, their interpretation, and creating community groups such as Instagram page Taylor nation to support their favourite artist.

The laser scene references Taylor Swift's Our Heart Going Incognito skit.

The lyric was written on Taylor's arm “I had the time of my life fighting dragons with you." , a reference to her song long live.

The dress joey king wore in the music video of mean. This could have been added to add nostalgia and emotional conection as reminder how much time has passed.

Mitski - My Love Mine All Mine

Mitski is an American singer nominated for an Academy Award for the best original song in everything everywhere, all at once, 'This is love'. Recently, her single My Love Mine All Mine managed to chart on the Billboard Hot 100, and it is also the song I will be analysing.

Misc-en-Scene and Interpretation:

The music video is conceptual and interpretive. It starts with a 4:3 Frame with round edges emulating the feel of old camera footage as we hear diegetic music of waves at the beach. The contrast between the white, yellow and blue is quite evident in the first shot as it removes a bright yellow flower from the broken egg

Interpretation:

This is entirely symbolic, as an egg symbolises life and our mortality, a reminder of how fragile life is, and the flower shows beauty even within broken things. Applying colour codes to this, the yellow in flower implies joy and happiness, which can be interpreted as the only thing to make this work beautiful again: love. This opening, just like the entire music video, is polysemic and thus has multiple interpretations, including one in which fans theorised it is about Mitski’s journey through the music industry. Since this is my analysis, we will be looking at it from the perspective of the relationship with lyrics.

Mitski struggles to push open the door, providing contrasting tones of warm angelic light from outside against the harsh fluorescent light of the studio. Entering barefoot, only wearing a white cotton dress. As she sings the line "Here before and after me, Shinin' down on me", this frame shows the lighting shining right atop Mitski as she assembles the first chair on top of the other. The lighting resembles moonlight as only one light source lights up the entire studio with a blue tint.

The close-up shows how incredibly fragile the structure is. This is followed by clips of her constructing a piece of unstable structure from all the mismatched chairs in the room. She can float to reach the top; it shows how being in love can sometimes feel like we are. She looks at it from afar; her work is unsafe. Something it misses is love, which provides us stability. It may be fragile, but we cannot live without it.

The music video has a very slowed-down pace with an average time of 8 seconds for each clip (yes, I counted the seconds, and they ranged from 4 - 16 seconds for each clip), and a soft colour palette complements Mitski’s soothing voice. Mitski's target audience, according to a Reddit poll, is ages 18-24, as she has a mature voice and a niche music style; her target audience is quite limited.

This frame is symmetrically divided by the tower of chairs as Mistki reflects on her life's work with only something so fragile and small in the grand scheme of things that holds it together: love. Ultimately, The music video revolves around themes of Life and its purpose. Located in a studio where anything in our imagination can become a reality, it symbolises life as a studio for humans to do something meaningful with our lives and what we are given. It also puts forward the idea that the small things in life matter.

In the end, this music video is unique as it does not conform to the conventional form of a music video. Instead, it is an art performance captured as a music video.

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Glass Animals - Heat Waves