A Music Debate--With A Twist: No.2

PREFACE Thanks to Con for a great debate thus far! I've never heard of Anberlin, and I was happy to have my own musical horizon's expanded by reading your review. In this round, to take a sharp departure from the techno-pop I presented last round, I will be reviewing a country artist's endeavor. Particularly, I will be reviewing Miranda Lambert's "The House that Built Me" music video, as it has some personal significance for me. I lived for years of my life in a house along the Munich outskirts, before moving to the Baltimore-Washington metro area in the U.S. I recently returned to visit my old house, and the experience was jarring, but worthwhile. This ballad evokes a lot of different feelings and images for me, and I hope you can relate, and if not, that you will still enjoy it as a well-written piece of music. I hope you like it :) REVIEW To evaluate a song's music video, one must first understand the song itself, and "The House that Built Me" by Miranda Lambert is not an especially complex song. But, perhaps that is an unfair statement. It's message may be simple, and it's storyline may be basic, but the array of emotion it conjures up is rich and textured--it is anything by uncomplicated. It is amazing how just a few, straightforward refrains can leave one brimming with feelings that you never realized you had; it's the hallmark of a genius lyric. The songs chronicles someone's return to their childhood home in an attempt to bring clarity to their turbulent life. The state of the roots effect the health of the tree, after all. This person wanders around this house, sometimes describing her memories of the home to the current owner, but always reminiscing about the past. The song is laden with emotion conveyed through empathy; the listener feels every tear-inducing memory, every poignant ounce of nostalgia, and every vivid recollection experienced by the singer. It is that ability to project such raw emotions that makes this a quality song. The question is, though, is the accompanying video a quality video. The risk with any ballad is that the video will simply follow the plotline presented by the story. "Oh, the lyrics said that the person does X and Y, well the actors in the video must also do X and Y." This makes intuitive sense, and helps prevent any cognitive dissonance between what viewers expect to see and what they actually see to a bear minimum. At the same time though, there is a very real danger that such formulaic set ups seem mechanical or fake. It may feel as if the actors are just going through the motions of the song, without any genuine feeling invested into the production. The true test of quality, then, in situations like these is authenticity. Does the video feel authentic? Are the lyrics coming alive on screen, or are the lyrics simply being paid obeisance? I will return to this question momentarily. For now, let's refocus to the video itself. Perhaps the most intriguing part of the video was that Lambert chose to do the shoot as herself, in a tour bus, rather than as an average person. I think this adds gravitas to the production. She is singing the song; it is HER message. Clearly, it is easier for the audience to believe in the authenticity of the video when the video is documenting the same person who is also narrating it. There is oftentimes this disjunction when artists have actors play intensely personal roles. One hears the vocalist sing "that's where I did my homework and learned to play guitar;" but one also knows that the actor isn't the singer--that the one saying "this is what I did" isn't the one doing it. This odd relationship serves to create distance between the music and the video, and to de-personalize the message itself. More technically, the darkened lighting throughout the video, coupled with old-fashioned video footage of the singer when she was young reflect the speakers depressed and nostalgic feelings respectively. We can feel that she is in need of illumination ("I thought that maybe I could find myself") and that her recollections of the past, which are far brighter--physically and emotionally--than her present, are helping her obtain that guidance. even the pans over Lambert singing in the house's bedroom, with her distant, far-off gaze, embody the nostalgia so artfully enshrined in the lyrics. The song itself is a 10/10; but that's not what I'm here to review. The video, however, also hits the mark. while not especially creative, it is authentic. Lambert's choice to play herself, the directors choice to use clever juxtapositions in lighting to convey emotions, and Lambert's own facial expressions throughout the filming project real feelings of nostalgia (and much more: loss, fear, anxiety, compassion, etc) in a way that melds wonderfully with the tone and feel of the song. The slow song, and slow pacing, the old house and old memories--it is little touches like these that so successfully round out this music video. So, what score does the video itself deserve? Certainly nothing less than a 9/10. Lyrics: http://www.metrolyrics.com... http://www.youtube.com...