video analysis

im going slightly mad- Queen




I am analysing a music video that is called ' I'm going slightly mad' sung by Queen and directed by Rudi Dolezal and Hannes Rossacher. The video was filmed at Wembley studios, London in February 1991. This video encompassed every aspect of this tongue in cheek track. The genre of music is glam rock but I feel that the video doesn’t necessarily follow the whole 'live performance' look for rock, but on the glam side of things I feel the monotone video gave the right atmosphere.

The lyrics and visuals have a very strong relationship due to the costume used i.e. the kettle hat on roger Taylor being worn, relating to the lyrics sung by Freddie mercury being “this kettle is boiling over”. This helps illustrate most of the lyrics being sung through the visuals giving a visual interpretation of it. I feel that the illustration helped exaggerate the tongue in cheek matters that Freddie mercury and queen were trying to push across in the song. Another example of illustration being used is where the lyrics are; “I think I’m a banana tree” and Freddie mercury is bearing a bunch of bananas on his head.

The lyrics and visuals have a very strong relationship due to the costume used i.e. The kettle hat on roger Taylor being worn, relating to the lyrics sung by Freddie mercury being “this kettle is boiling over”. This helps illustrate most of the lyrics being sung through the visuals giving a visual interpretation to the song.
The relationship between music and visuals- the solo instrumental pieces have the same visuals as with lyrics shown, showing consistency with visuals. I think that editing is rather swift which follows the whole of the video with a swift rhythm of music and actions. For example; in the first chorus, the word ‘happened’ is repeated and as they are, three of the band move up on the sofa each time away from the lead singer. This here shows a connection between the rhythms of the music with the actions.

The record company are looking to sell this track by the surrealism of the video as it is quite memorable with the illustration and costumes. The entire band is dressed up, like in most of their music videos, this expressing their extension of variety in themes of their music and song lyrics. The image that comes across is mysterious as the video is all in monotone apart from the feathers at the end of the video; also giving a sense of fantasy. The video, I think gives an idea of not change, but a reminder that Queen are who they want to be, rather than what people i.e. managers and critics want them to be.

There are no intertextual references within this music video making it completely unique and one of its own.

The video is mainly narrative based due to the fact it has many visual matches to the lyrics. There is real no sign of performance based apart from the lip syncing for the lyrics, but apart from that the whole video is made up and presented as a surreal piece of drama.