After coming back from a lovely trip to Scotland where I got to eat like the Queen at Elephant House Cafe and sail the great Loch Ness, I dove head first into the new Fall Out Boy album to avoid being any sort of productive human being. After listening to their album over 50 times, and the song Phoenix over 300, I decided to check out the music videos attached to the album.
Initially, I didn’t think much of them. The first video was full of fire, but that can be expected from a song sub-titled Light ‘Em Up, and a little bit dark at the end. The second video for Phoenix got a lot darker, involving the kidnapping and torture of each of the band members. Weird, but nothing that really fazed me too much, though what that says about my sanity I’m not sure considering this was actually my favorite of the three videos. It ended on a pretty notable scene, with Patrick, the lead singer, snapping his fingers at the head of a banquet table.
After watching this several (read as: 54) times, I decided it was time to move onto the last video, Young Volcanoes. When the video opens, it begins with Patrick snapping his fingers at the head of a banquet table. After watching the first twenty seconds I stopped the video and realized something: this video was an exact continuation of the last.
Instantly intrigued, I ran back to the first two videos and watched them front to back. The first video ends with the audience seeing the members of Fall Out Boy in the back of a truck held captive by the people who were setting their instruments and records on fire. The start of the next video starts with the same scene, but quickly hops into a flashback of a week earlier when the band stumbles on some sort of important briefcase and the kidnappings begin, making the connection easy to miss.
I was amazed. I remembered the era of Middle School Fall Out Boy, when back in the day before their hiatus their music videos were over nine minutes long for a four minute long song. Their videos always told some strange story, but found really odd and round about ways to do so, often involving strange dance offs. This new video-storytelling fascinated me.
Episodic music videos. I’ve never heard of it before, but apparently it’s becoming some kind of trend among bands. While Fall Out Boy has already announced that every song on their album will follow the story the first three have set up, giving us over a half hour of intense story, other bands seem to be doing similar things.
Darling Parade, a relatively small band often compared to Paramore because of the likeness between the lead singers, has also taken on an episodic structure of music videos. Their first episode for their song Ghost was only just released. The structure and overall filming technique between the two bands and their videos is incredibly different, but the message is still the same.
Bands are becoming storytellers. They’ve given us the lyrics, and now they’re going steps beyond to show us an alternative story, connecting their songs in ways albums simply haven’t been able to in the past.
In both videos dialogue isn’t involved at all. As someone with a strong interest in screenwriting, I’m fascinated by this. The messages and story is all visual with only the music to guide us along. Darling Parade, at the end of Ghost, gives us a little monologue from the singer to set the stage for where the next videos are headed, making the episodic nature clear from the beginning, but Fall Out Boy has done nothing of the sort.
I can’t wait to follow both stories to the next level and see where the bands are taking us good followers next, or if any other bands are going to start hopping on this trend.
If you haven’t seen either action video series yet, I strongly suggest you do so now. Darling Parade seems to be headed down a strong action road, where Fall Out Boy’s album isn’t for the faint of heart.
-Kaitie
Inky Musings 