3rd Textual Analysis Of Music Videos

Kings Of Leon – Four Kicks

Kings of Leon is an American rock band that originated in Albion, Oklahoma but formed in Nashville, Tennessee in 1999. The band is composed of brothers Anthony Caleb Followill (lead vocals, rhythm guitar), Ivan Nathan Followill (drums, percussion, backing vocals), youngest sibling Michael Jared Followill (bass guitar, backing vocals), and their cousin Cameron Matthew Followill (lead guitar, backing vocals). The group is named after their grandfather Leon from Talihina, Oklahoma. The band have so far released five studio albums, their debut album named, ‘Youth and Young Manhood’ was released in the UK, July 2003 and became a sensation in the UK and Ireland, where NME declared it "one of the best debut albums of the last 10 years".

In 2004, building on the southern-infused garage rock of their first album, second album, ‘Aha Shake Heartbreak’ was released and broadened the band's domestic and international audience. ‘Because Of The Times’ (2007) debuted at number one in the UK and Ireland and entered the European charts at No. 25, selling approximately 70,000 copies in its first week of release. NME said that the album "cements Kings of Leon as one of the great American bands of our times." and Entertainment Weekly called Because of the Times "an epic wide-screen movie of a CD and the band's best to date." After recording throughout most of 2008, Kings of Leon released their fourth studio album, ‘Only by the Night’, on September 19, which subsequently entered the UK Albums Chart at No. 1 and remained there for one more week. Q magazine named it "Album of the Year" for 2008 whilst In the United States, reactions to the album were more mixed. The band’s most recent album, ‘Come Around Sundown’ was released on October 18, 2010 in the Uk. The album mostly received a good reception and its success continued as they received a Grammy nomination for best rock song in 2011 for the song "Radioactive”.        

‘Four Kicks’ is the second single taken from Aha Shake Heartbreak, it peaked at number 24 in the UK singles chart and number 32 in the Irish singles chart. At the time, the band per suited more a Southern Rock genre, however in order to break into the mainstream or in other words, the more popular audience, they fell under the Alternative Rock genre.  In terms of the broad characteristics of the genre which feature in the video, the band are shown playing all their instruments, therefore having a performance based concept to the video and also other stereotypical aspects of the genre that are shown in the video consists of the bands attire, they are all shown wearing skinny jeans, boots which accompanies their hair styles, all being fairly long as well as the rest of their look and this all falls under a stereotypical view of a Rock band’s image.  When it comes to the relationship between lyrics and visuals, I believe that the song is basically about a woman who is currently with a man from the south; however she seems to have fallen for another man, who is from the city. This causes conflict between the two men and there is certainly a big influence of aggression on the song which is portrayed throughout the video due to the fact that an immense fight breaks out and the visuals that come across are quite graphic.  The meaning of the song is also emphasised through the lyrics, here is an example:

She's a lovin' on the boy from the city
I'll be lovin' him under my shoe.

You with your switchblade posse,
I'll get my guns from the south,
We'll take to the yard like a cockfight
Four kicks whose strutting now.

The relationship between the music and the visuals is the element that is mostly highlighted in the video. The video is set in a lobby where a massive fight breaks out spontaneously with people surrounding the band which are located in the centre of it all. During the fighting the room is lit in red; but whenever Caleb (lead singer) is singing the red light goes out and the people fighting freeze in mid-air. This can relate to many things such as the band’s image, what sort of crowd they are trying to attract or simply the pace changing within the video. The video does change pace along with the music and this is lead through whether or not the red light is on. The video doesn't really cut to the beat and this can be a way of emphasising the obliteration that is shown throughout the and also the manic feeling behind it as well.  Also, there is a guitar solo in the video which only causes the fight to lengthen and things to get out of control.

In reference to the notion of looking along with close- ups and star image motifs in the video, there are plenty of close ups of each band member and this can represent the fact that the record label want them to be recognised by a larger audience considering that they had only just released their second studio album. The band aren’t really  on sexual display, however some could argue that the lead guitarist is due to the loose vest he is wearing which enables him to show off his chest and arms. Apart from that, the camera work along with the editing is only out to get the band more recognised and this is backed up by the point that this video had more performance featured that any other video that they had released before and this can also mean that the record company was out to sell both the track and album which eventually became very successful.

To conclude, the video is mainly performance based however some elements are narrative based which are portrayed through the violence and graphic content in the video.

Fernando Rocha