SIA- CHANDELIER ANALYSIS

Firstly Sia is a pop singer. The music video I have analyzed is called ‘Chandelier’. The artist of the song is not featured in the music video. The star image is represented as a young girl. The music video doesn’t specifically relate to the genre being ‘pop’ because the lighting is dark and dull and the type of dance used which is contemporary dance has been adapted to be made more modern by dancing it to a pop song.

Furthermore the narrative of the song is the dancer is trying to break away from the negatives of life by taking drugs or alcohol, anything that will block out the world for one night no matter what happens the next day. This narrative could highlight how she is feeling depressed so her only hope is to turn to drugs or gateway of some sort to solve her problems. This further relates to the genre of pop because its more modern and it has become more common to take drugs or for young people to be influenced to feel depressed and that there only way out is to take drugs based on society changes.

There is no lip-syncing in the music video as the song is all visualized through dance. The music video cuts to the beat at every dance move during the chorus of the words ‘1,2,3’. This is emphasized through quick cuts, jump cuts and her body movements.

Most of the lyrics in the song match the visuals. For example swings her head back and forth when lyrics say ‘swing’. As if she is swinging away from life and the idea of drugs taking over her body and how she expresses her feelings for drugs through her passionate dancing.

When she dances from one end of the room to the other to the window which is light outside represents her hiding indoors with her drug addiction shown through lyric of ‘ chandelier’.

 In my opinion I think that the lyric ‘chandelier’ is used as a metaphor to represent drugs or alcohol. The dancer then falls to floor at the end when she says ‘holding on for tonight’ this action links to the lyrics as she’s holding onto the floor just for one night. 

At the end of the music video there is repletion of the same dance moves with the same lyrics at the end which say ‘just for tonight’ which highlights how she wants to escape from the world for ‘just’ one night.

This music video relates to my music video idea because in our video we are going to have a young boy dancing around different places expressing his sexuality.