Textual Anaylsis Of A Music Video 1

I decided to analyse The Longest Time by The Overtones. The song was originally recorded by Billy Joel in 1984.  In 2011, the Overtones recorded The Longest Time for their album Good Ol’ Fashioned Love. The song genre is a doo wop song and could also be classed as swing. As a musical genre, doo-wop features vocal group harmony with the musical qualities of many vocal parts, nonsense syllables, a simple beat, sometimes little or no instrumentation, and simple music and lyrics. The longest time follows these characteristics, with its simple beat and the use of not many instruments. The Overtones are a vocal harmony group which also follows the characteristics.

This song was written to be a love song. The longest time is a song about trying to keep a girl for the longest time you can. The video illustrates this in different ways. In the beginning of the video we see a girl who is dressed up talking to the boys, which shows the audience that’s who the band are trying to keep for the longest time. Then throughout the video we see all of them getting ready so they can try and impress this girl to take her out. Even though the video is modern, the boys are dressed in old fashioned suits which follows the style of a doo wop song. They almost fight over the present throughout the video to show there is competition between them to get the girl. At the end of the video to show the song has ended, we see that one of the boys has been lucky and has won the girl which shows he “intends to hold you for the longest time” which is a final lyric before the end chorus of the song.

Throughout the video close ups off each band member are used to allow the audience to see their emotions and also allow us to see their personality through their facial expressions as well as their facial features such as eyes and smile. The record company are trying to create the image that the band are gentleman who are almost looking for love and that they are willing to try and impress a woman dressing up in a nice suit with a gift. Previous videos also show the band looking stylish in a suit. Most of their songs are about love which follows the image the record company is trying to create. In my opinion their motif is wearing the suits and being in the wrong time period where there sing older song which maybe aren’t as well known as an old pop song for example. Singing a different genre of music means they are orginal instead of being like any other boy band.

I think that the video is trying to suggest that it isn’t all about sex. In my opinion I think that the band are trying to show how a proper gentleman should act, trying to impress a woman then taking her out on a date instead of just trying to get into bed with her. This can be seen through the use of costumes. The men are all in smart suits not trying to suggest sex. The woman although she is wearing a skirt she has tights on and a jacket which covers up any ‘sexy’ parts of her body.

The video is half and half between performance and narrative. This is because the band is singing to the camera whilst almost showing us how to impress a woman. It is more performance. I don’t think it is concept however because the video is based on a group of men trying to impress a woman so they can keep her for as long as they are able to.