Chocolate - The 1975, (Textual Analysis)

Lip syncing is a huge part of most music videos, despite the genre. Artists from generous such as rock, pop, indie and classical all use lip syncing in their videos as a means to communicate to their audience.

For this textual analysis I am going to study an Indie music video. The 1975 are an indie rock band, who rose to more mainstream fame from the single 'Chocolate'. Lead singer Matt Healey says he believes they are the biggest band that no one has heard of, meaning they are still a small indie band that do not have huge mainstream following, but everyone knows who they are.

Their video for Chocolate, at time of writing, has 14,857,657 views on YouTube. They use lipsycing throughout their music video, which is completely in black and white. The main scenes of lip syncing consist of Healy on his own in a dark lit room, and then the band singing along to their track in a car driving around on a cold raining night. Due to this pathetic fallacy and the lighting, the video has a relaxed dull feel, however the interesting visuals, lighting and camera angles make the viewer want to continue watching.

The first location we see Healey sing in, is when he is along in a room. This gives a vulnerable side to him as he is by himself in a dark location. However it also makes him mysterious as we cannot fully see his face fully due to the lighting. This creates enigma for the audience as we want to carry on watching to get to know the real Matt Healy. The lighting doesn't allow the audience to see Healys mouth when he is lip-syncing, how ever we can see him face moving. This shows the audience that he is intact the front man of the band and that he is a keen musician.

The next scenes of the band lip syncing are in the car. At first it just Matt Healey singing, but from the chorus the other members join in. This shows the band to be close as they all know when to join in singing together. It also unites the band at the main part of the song. A chorus is usually the part of the song most people will know the lyrics to, which is amplified in the video by the members only singing the chorus, it also in a way highlights the chorus as the most important part of their song.

I believe the lip-syncing in this song is of an extreme high quality. The shots would have taken place in a studio with professional directors this allows the band members to be able to do as many takes as necessary and get training from directors who know how to create a good lip sync.