Music Video Analysis

How You Remind Me - Nickelback

The video that I am going to analyse is “How You Remind Me” by Nickelback. The song is a rock song; this is conveyed in the video by having lots of performance shots.

The lyrics of “How You Remind Me” are amplified by the visuals occasionally. At the beginning Chad, the lead singer, is talking about being sad and how he’s ‘never made it’ and the colour of the video is very dim and like a sort of blue grey colour. He is also sitting on a bed looking very sad and depressed.

The video is very much related to the music. The video is cut to the beat and when instruments have a solo section they are often shown playing it on stage. This not only helps the video to flow smoothly it also adds authenticity to the piece. The pace of the editing compliments the pace of the track. When the track is more relaxed and sitting back, so is the editing but when the track gets more energetic so too does the pace of the editing. The audience can see that this is a real band playing real instruments. The pace of the music is also conveyed in the video. At the beginning the pace is quite slow which is shown by the fact that not many shots are being used. When the band really gets into it and the music lifts up the editing is sped up and more shots are used.

There are several close-ups in the video. These are the star shots that make the money. We can see that it is Chad Kroeger singing. Chad looks very serious when he is playing, this shows that him and his band are serious about their music, they don’t mess about. It also adds some authenticity. We see that they are a real band and it also makes the narrative seem like it was real. We can then relate to this. We see that actually this is a real man singing about real experiences.

The Nickelback video is about half performance based and half narrative based. We see sometimes Chad walking down the street or sitting at home, illustrating the narrative. Then some of the time we see the band performing on stage. At the end however the two merge. We see the band performing on stage and the girl from the narrative comes into the audience.

In conclusion the video is very much a stereotypical rock video. There are lots of performance shots showing a real band playing real instruments. Also there is a small narrative relating to the lyrics of the song.