Andrew Goodwin Task

Andrew Goodwin was a music director and organist for Bangor Cathedral for 37 years. He believed that pop videos were becoming daring and swaying from showing the traditional narrative aspects of the song. However this was not the case – pop videos were just choosing to deliver the narrative in a different way than novels and fillms.

Reasons for different narrative structure:
1) The pop videos are based on the songs which usually do not have a specific narrative structure – therefore the video will not cover a traditional narrative structure. The pop songs of today usually focus on normality, problems and resolutions
2) Usually in pop videos the artist is the narrator and plays a character within the short film
3) The artist engages the audience by looking directly at the camera which makes them feel involved with the performance


Pop videos use the simple technique of repeating certain images in their video in the same way the song repeats the chorus or lines to trigger familiarity to the audience. Also intertextuality between songs means that audiences being to recognise the genre and know what type of video they want to see when it comes to that particular genre – expectations. Finally, through further repetition through advertisement the pop song would become very familiar to audiences – the video will be shown on television, song played on the radio, etc.

Not all pop videos stick to ‘telling the story’ of the song, sometimes the songs meaning is interpretated into something that provides visual pleasure for the audience. The audience will watch it again and again which then promotes the song. Sometimes videos set out to promote films aswell.

Three relations between songs and videos:

1) Illustration – where the video tells the story of the lyrics

TOK - Footprints

This is a good example of an illustration relation between a song and music video. This is because within each verse it shows the clip of how the character, who they are singing about, is behaving. For example, in verse one they sing about a mother who has lost her son in war and the audience can see how the mother is reacting to receiving the letter that her son is dead.

2) Amplification – this relation introduces new meanings to the video without swaying away from the meaning of the lyrics – it adds layers of meaning

Dizzee Rascal - Holiday

This video does not follow the ‘story’ of what Dizzee is rapping, however, it sticks with the theme of holidays by setting it at a pool party and making the atmosphere seem lively and fun.

3) Disjuncture – this occurs when the video and song lyrics share little or no link, sometimes even contradicting the lyircs.

La Roux - Im not your toy

This video is an example of the above relation as it visual image has nothing to do with the lyrics. It shows the singer with a microphone and backing dancers in a green house – which sways greatly from the topic of being used by the ones you love.

Another main feature of pop videos is how women are disembled and presented for ‘male desire’. They are not encouraged to play a passive role either within the video, instead they flaunt their assets and look directly at the audience to engage them. This attracts a male audience and also a female one too as some aspire to look how the celebrities do in the videos.