A Music Debate--With A Twist: No. 3

While some music videos follow the lyrics of their respective songs to the letter, most music videos are dedicated to enhancing the mood produced by the song both lyrically and melodically. Vanilla Twilight is one such song. The video opens with the view of a light tower against a white, cloudy sky and an icy cold, snowy environment. Twinkles of light flash from the tower as Adam Young's voice softly begins to sing. Although the video doesn't exactly portray the subject of the song's lyrics, the mellow feel of the song is paralleled by the video's mellow background and colors. The light tower's flashing lights will be a recurring visual theme of the music video. The video then begins to feature a series of people looking up, their faces contracted either as a reflex against some glare, as signified from the change of lights on the ground behind them, or as a reaction of surprise. The video begins by having these people go about doing everyday activities. One man is just leaving his house, one woman is walking with groceries, another man is simply walking with his hands in his pockets. The grocery woman suddenly stops to look up to the sky just as the Young stops singing and hits an instrumental key area of the song. The abrupt change is mirrored by the people's abruptly captured attention. As the instrumental section plays, the people previously introduced, along with a few others, are shown to look up into the sky. All of them are acting as if they are both hearing young's voice from some point in the sky and seeing some unusual phenomena. The song's mellow nature continues to be matched by the slow, drowsy colors of the video's snowy-white setting while the flashing lights give an illusory hint of warmth. We are then shown the phenomena, at least the visual aspect of it, that the actors on the set are shown to be gazing at: a massive swirl of clouds surrounding a hurricane-like eye. This visual apparatus emanates soft hues of lights at its crevices. At around 2:20, Young drastically ups the dynamic level of the song as it hits a passionate key area. One of the characters raises his arms at the same moment. A series of appreciative gestures are depicted: a boy takes off his hat, three other characters smile in different cuts, a hobo drops his cup of change, a girl runs out from her home with her eyes to the sky and her face fixed in a smile.Just as dramatic notes or melodies can infuse a tingly burst of energy in the listener, the people depicted in the video react very appropriately to Young's hitting the dramatic key area of his song. During this upkey, the lyrics sing: "Oh if my voice could reach back through the past, I'd whisper in your ear: darling I wish you were here."Young's voice was literally singing from the sky into what the viewer can assume to be the past (as that would make most sense). Finally the previous cuts of the song take on a definite meaning. All the other aspects of the lyrics of this song, stars, hands, lying awake, etc., are visually ignored; they weren't really even necessary. The video succeeds in making a scene, a story even, out of one main aspect of the song which explains what the singer was intending to do: singing back into the past to some beloved person who is no longer there with him. I think the primary aspect which makes the video very relevant to the song is its artistically matching visuals and colors. The blue-ish hues and the warming lights brilliantly capture the mood of the song's general feel and melodies. Artistically, the images were very beautiful, as is the romantic thought of singing back to the past to someone very much missed.However, the moment at the end of the song when one of the video's characters looks directly at the camera (the viewer) and smiles is disconcerting and feels somewhat detached from the rest of the video. Otherwise, I really have no complaints.This video earns a 9/10 in my book.