1st Textual Analysis Of Music Videos

The Strokes – Juicebox

‘The Strokes’ are an American indie rock band formed in 1999 in New York City. Consisting of Julian Casablancas (lead vocals), Nick Valensi (lead guitar), Albert Hammond, Jr. (rhythm guitar), Nikolai Fraiture (bass guitar) and Fabrizio Moretti (drums and percussion), the band have been named one of the most prominent and influential rock bands to emerge in the 21st century. Upon the release of their debut album Is This It in 2001, the melodic garage rock sound received universal acclaim from both mainstream and independent publications, including 5 stars from Rolling Stone, it made many critics' top 10 lists, and was named the best album of the year by Entertainment Weekly and TIME. Since then, the band have gone on to release another 3 studio albums consisting of ‘Room On Fire’ (2003) , ‘First Impressions Of Earth’ (2006) and ‘Angles’ released earlier this year. For my textual analysis of a music video, I’ve decided to analyse ‘Juicebox’, the second track and first single from the bands third album, released in the US in October 2005. The track was leaked long before it was released as a single. The early leaking of the song forced the band and managers to release it as a single in iTunes format earlier than previously planned. The video for "Juicebox", directed by Michael Palmieri with cinematography by Christopher Doyle, features comedian David Cross as a DJ in a radio station in New York City. The video caused some controversy because it contained an abundance of sexual content, which caused Palmieri to do major edits on the video so that it would be less explicit.

The video initialises with a shot capturing a sign saying ‘ON THE AIR’ and quickly cuts to the band getting ready to perform on a live radio session. In terms of genre characteristics, this is a fairly stereotypical aspect of the indie genre due to the fact that in the video there is a performance based concept. In comparison to this, we see a DJ named ‘Woody’ announcing that the band are live in the studio however, he refers to them as ‘Stroke’ and ‘Juicebox’ as ‘Juicy Juice’. This adds a certain humour to the video and gives off the impression that the band arent taken that seriously as well the fact that they aren’t ‘huge’ in the states in comparison to their status in Europe and the DJ goes on to speak of this. At this point, we get reaction shots of each member in the band before they start playing. We are given evidence through their reactions that they arent particularly enfusiastic and this can also be considered quite stereotypical of an indie band’s attitude towards certain ways of promoting (especially in this case). Other characteristics that link the video to its genre is the amount of sexual content that is shown within the video. Throughout the video, we see shots of women kissing  eachother, a man and a woman kissing as well as a very odd scene where an elder woman is shown scrubbing the floor whilst her dog gets excited because of it. In a way, some of the scenes can be considered counter typical because they are quite different and controversial however it still relates to the music genre.

When it comes to the relationship between lyrics and visuals, the song  in my opinion is mainly based on lust. Throughout the video, we see shots that do portray the lyrics as well as the meaning behind the song. Initially, there is a wide shot of New York City along with its bright lights and highlighting this shot is what seems to be the Empire State Building giving off sound waves to the whole city and we come back to this shot a couple more times later on in the video therefore emphasising the meaning behind it.

The lyrics that relate to this are;

‘Why won't you come over here?
We’ve got a city to love
Why won't you come over here?
We’ve got a city to love.

It is as if the music played by the band is amplified through the city and once it reaches the people, they become sexually aroused. This therefore brings me to the references that relate the notion of looking. This plays a key part in this particular video, so much so that some of the original extended version had to be edited to make it less sexually explicit. Its not the band that are on sexual display however, it is everyone else in the video that clearly is. The camera work, costume and acting all contribute towards the implied sexual display.

In terms of the relationship between music and visuals, we come across our first example early on in the video. This consists of the old woman tapping the ash of her cigarette to the beat of the drum fill. This evidently needed some speeding up in the editing in order to achieve the effect. Another example would be towards the end of the video where everything seems climax. The actors in the video come to the end of their sexual arousal as the song comes to and end. There are no real intertextual references in the video, however, when it comes to close ups of the artists and star image motifs, there are a few. Through this video, I think that the record company are trying to sell the band as well as highlighting the fact that at the time, they were a breath of fresh if you like, and they came across as different therefore decided to make a controversial music video.

To conclude, I think that the video is 50% performance based, 30% concept based and 20% narrative based. All 3 come together and successfully achieve an individual video, which also portrays the band’s style. In terms of relating the video to the song, as Julian Casablancas once quoted, “I remember people saying this track's ugly, I think it's got a great personality."

Fernando  Rocha

ThE StRoKeS - JuIcEbOx by MiKaEl94