Everything that kills me… makes me feel alive~ OneRepublic

Love, love LOVE this song! Every time I hear it, I smile. Upbeat, great lyrics, slick music production. So what about the video? Frankly, I’m not sure.

Filmed in New Orleans in the second oldest church in the country, the band performs in a basement while overhead a Christian revival meeting is going on. The two scenes are cut together in quick bites and interspersed with an alligator roaming around. The video culminates in someone from the revivalist meeting falling through the floorboards down to where the band are.

An intersection of belief sytems, perhaps? Music News says: Lyrics “losing sleep dreaming about the things that I could be,” resonate in the duality of danger being ever present and looking for a safe haven to heal yourself. The lost alligator roams the halls of the deteriorated church basement far from its’ swamp home and the ever present unknown. 

Lost in translation is the phrase that comes to mind when I watch it. I feel like the meaning is an elusive vision, hovering just outside my cornersight. But then maybe I’m just looking for something that’s not there in the first place!

To be fair, part of my ambivalence towards the video is because the music incites a wholly different set of images for me – far removed from church basements and bible-singing congregations. But this was the vision the band and British producer James Lees (British aesthetic, colour, frames, blah di blah…) shared, so I’m on board with that and I still totally LOVE the song.

The Video

The making of the video!

Crystal. Maybach. Diamonds on your timepiece. Jet planes. Islands.Tigers on a gold leash. We don’t care, we aren’t caught up in your love affair~Lorde

Royals by Lorde seems to be the kind of song that everyone wants to cover, and some of them are damn good. I’ve pasted in a couple of the best ones below.

Meanwhile, sixteen year old New Zealander, Lorde, has a runaway hit on her hands. A song reputably written in half an hour in response to the wealth and shallowness of the Hip Hop Industry, has a simple pared down video directed by Joel Kefali and featuring Lorde’s school mates.

The video is a depiction of ordinary teenage life, limited to a few scenes of two young men getting about their very unglamorous business. Lorde features in short, interspersed flashes, singing some lines (there is a US version and an international version), and that’s about it!

Does it work? Well its got that spare, barely-choregraphed, home movie thing going for it, but I doubt that’s been enough to truly satisfy the palate of the sophisticated music video consumer. No dancing. No imagery directly connected with the lyrics and guys with zits (the latter is enough to make me like it! Love a dose of reality).

With nearly 130 million views on YouTube, it’s certainly been seen by a bunch of people. Fortunately the song is so good, my feeling is that the video neither enhances nor detracts!

Here’s the US version:

And here’s the Florda State University Capella Version:

And the Ali Brustofski version with Savannah Outen, Andrew Garcia, Caitlin Hart & Josh Golden

And lastly … the Pentatonix

Which one do you like best?