MUSIC VIDEO ANALYSIS - Everybody Hurts

The video begins on a road, making it seem that you are a car travelling on it; therefore immediately making the audience feel like the message of the song may be aimed at them as they are made to feel a part of the video. This songs’ message acts like advice to the audience, and the video gets that advice across by showing that ‘You’re not alone’ and that there is a lot of people just like you in the world.

‘When the day is long’, are the lyrics that open the scene of a group of people inside a car. I think that a car journey has been used to symbolize the ‘long days’ that the band is describing.

The next set of lyrics; ‘and the night is yours alone’, is contradicted by what we see in the video which is a traffic jam, suggesting that even when you feel alone, there are a lot of people who will always be in the same position as you.

‘When you’re sure you’ve had enough’ is visually accompanied by the sight of a young boy with his hands against the window with the words ‘They’re all stuck’ at the bottom of the screen. This suggests that this writing we see on screen that doesn’t match the lyrics are the thoughts of the person who we see. So in this case, the boy seems ‘stuck’ himself, however he is also thinking that everybody is in the same position as him; supporting the message of the song.

This shot shows an upset woman with the ‘thought’ that nobody can see her. The lyrics ‘everybody cries’ applies to what we see, as if to tell the woman and the audience that it is okay to cry because ‘everybody cries’.

‘Everybody hurts’ is the next set of lyrics showing a young boy thinking ‘They’re going to miss me’, this suggests that it is okay to  ‘hurt’ because a lot of people do even though they don’t show it. 

The audience hears ‘Hold on’, and we are greeted with a low angle of a boy ripping pages out of a book, alongside the words ‘They that sow in tears shall reap in joy’ written on the screen. I believe that this means that if you ‘Hold On’ when you’re sad, you’ll eventually be happy again. Basically I believe that it suggests that joy is always around the corner, this is associated with what we see on the screen as the boy is sat on the edge of a bridge, so if he ‘Holds On’, he will remain happy.

 On the screen, we see a young boy wishing that his dad would stop singing, even though the audience will have grasped of the message that ‘Everybody Hurts’, therefore showing that the boy is one of the many people who struggle in everyday life. The lyrics for this scene still apply to this boy’s story of him wanting his dad to stop singing, and the lyrics tell us ‘When you think you’ve had enough of this life’, telling the audience that the boy wishes that he had a different life.

Throughout the music video, each shot shows each individual story of the people stuck in the traffic jam. I believe this to have been a clever way to express narrative because even though each individual’s story is different that is making them ‘hurt’. However the message of the song is that even though everybody is different, ‘everybody hurts’ in the same way, proving that you are never alone so everybody needs to stick together.

This music video has been analysed due to the significance I am looking to include in my video also; how it tackles everyday problems and lets people know they are not alone. I am looking to use this theme in my music video also because it is not that much of a recurring theme, there is a lot more to come from it.