Blurry Analysis

By Will Yeates

Fade in with the opening rift of the song we see images of the singer and a little boy, who we assume is the singers son, almost like a flash back.

First shot we see of the performers, we see the whole band together rather than just the singer, this is an uncommon approach as we would normally only see the singer or the star image.

We see the boy running to his father, clearly excited and happy to see him, shows that they have a good relationship. We are yet to see a mother figure in this video only a father.

First words of the song we have a close up of the singer, start to see the star image quality we normally see and associate with performance videos.

Flash and we see a woman and a man sitting in a car waiting. The man has tattoos and is drinking a beer, these things combined are things we would often associate to bad people or bad influences. The woman on the other hand is wearing a plain white dress and is the one actually driving the car, the white of her dress is something we might associate with innocence and goodness as well as the fact that she is driving shows she is the responsible one of the two.

We see a close up of the guitarist rather than the singer, unusual as normally only the singer gets close ups, this unconventional style of the performance side of the video could be the band attempting to rewrite the rules, so to say, on star imagery in music videos.

We see the boy now with the man and the woman from the car, woman possibly his mum, we can see the man acting in a threatening manner. There is clearly a bad relationship between the boy and the man this contrasts the good relationship between the boy and his father.

Threatening environment of the kitchen juxtaposed with the tranquil environment of the boy and the dad sleeping on the sofa in the next shot.

Shot of the boy crying and talking to his father after the shot of the other man acting aggressively, also ties in with the lyrics “nobody told you what to say” implying that the son is scared and does not know what to do and has turned to his father for help. This can be seen as the band amplifying the message that children do not understand domestic problems and that when they happen they do not know what to do to make them better.

Contrast to the start of the video the father now has to carry the boy to the car to be taken away, boy does not want to go.

Amplified message of this video convey the struggles and confusion a small child goes through when a couple get divorced, also maybe about the struggles of bad relationships.