A2: TEXTUAL ANALYSIS- 3 MUSIC VIDEOS

Fifteen- Taylor Swift

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb-K2tXWK4w

Over the years, Taylor Swift has built up an image, much like Justin Bieber, which helps to sell her songs and videos to her target audience, due to her reputation as a young, innocent girl who writes songs about her own personal experiences with romance. Arguably, she does have more of a unique selling point than Justin Bieber and other solo artists of that age, because when you think of a Taylor Swift song you automatically think 'lighthearted' and 'romance'. This is why her video for Fifteen is very typical of her, and much like the style of her other videos. She plays a guitar in many of her videos which links to the genre of her songs- very country. She is very natural in the way she dresses and looks very young, which appeals to her target audience that are young teenage girls. The audience can relate to her videos in particular because she sings about very common things that happen in the lives of teenage girls, and this video in particular is effective. It is a mix between performance and narrative, with Taylor walking in through the door to a new school at the beginning of the video, and the lyrics are directly related to the story line because she is expressing how nervous she feels. There are a lot of close ups of her singing in the performance sections because she is selling her image partly on herself, similar to Justin Bieber. It again emphasises her youth and trivialises the video, because at times it hits some serious topics that need to be made more lighthearted. The pace of the song is relatively slow, which isn't uncommon for Taylor Swift, but some may say that it's perhaps more of a deep song and video than some of her others, because it really focuses on the life of teenage girls like herself, through the use of extras, props, hair, wardrobe, and even backdrops and colour schemes. The video makes it seem like almost a dream world she is in because it has illusions that blur into each other and pastel colours and tones that take it away from a realistic vibe. It basically sums up the journey that most teenage girls go through around that age, but puts a positive spin on it by giving the impression that Taylor Swift is giving her fans advice through her lyrics.