Arctic Monkeys: Leave Before The Lights Come On

‘Leave Before The Lights Come On’ is a narrative music video, the plot being a tale of a woman’s obsession and a need for affection. It is about a woman, calling out for help and craving sympathy by making a man believe she is about to commit suicide. He comforts her, but soon realises she has other intentions and so tells her to leave him alone. Only through him shouting at her does she leave him. And so she runs back up to the same suicide spot awaiting her next ‘victim’.

The video does not relate to the song, or the genre. Narrative videos are quite common with indie music, however obsession is not generally a theme explored within this genre. Bands often do appear in narrative videos however small the part. Although this is common with Arctic Monkeys videos, they often have narrative based videos in which they don’t appear.

The video begins with a medium close up of a man walking down the road. The lighting is low level, and the setting appears grey and dull. This makes the female character stand out more. Costume is used effectively in this video, as her blue t-shirt makes her stand out and so you know she is vital to the narrative.

In a medium close up we see a shoe falling down in front of the man, we do not see her throwing the shoe and so it appears to both the man and the audience that she is about to kill herself, so there is still an element of surprise for the viewer as we find out all is not as it seems.

The man runs to rescue her, a series of tracking shots and match cuts are used here to suggest he is the more relatable, mentally-stable character of the two.

After she is ‘saved’ the background appears more vibrant. From a dull, grey setting to a bright white, with bright props in the background. The fruit at the counter is bright red and yellow. It makes the viewer sense a happier ending as everything appears brighter however they soon realise this is not the case.

The majority of the shots range from medium close ups to medium long shots. They don’t vary that greatly, a lot of tracking shots are used with little variation. This is so the focus is on the narrative rather than the aesthetics which is common with music videos (albeit generally other genres such as R‘N’B.) It almost feels like a short story rather than a music video, a reason for this being that the song is clearly not the main focus as the cuts don’t correspond with

the music.

The cutting rhythm however is similar to that of a music video. The length of the shots varies between one and four seconds which is the norm of a music video.

Close up shots are used to show her affectionate glances towards him, so the viewer realises that she has feelings of some sort towards him.

The video ends with the story almost repeating itself, only from her perspective rather than his. As now the viewers know what she is going to do, it is shows her doing it.