Hello again, KCRers (or KCR listeners? Maybe readers… I don’t know!)! Welcome to this week’s edition of Music Videos You Should See. This time around we are going to take a look at Vance Joy’s music video for his song ‘Riptide’. I will post the video below, but I will tell you now, be ready. I suggest that you listen closely to the lyrics as you watch what is happening in the video.
Finished? Good, right? But definitely an odd one. Now, if you took my suggestion you probably already noticed that the lyrics are taken pretty literally throughout the entire video. A lady, running. Then a video of a riptide. Stuff like that. When I first watched this video I noticed what was going on about half way through and couldn’t stop laughing. Now that I’ve gone back and watched it a few more times over, there are more and more little details that stand out to me.
Let me bring up the woman singing the chorus. We see her about five times throughout the video doing this and each time it gets a little bit rougher. First, she lip syncs the words perfectly. That’s alright, that’s normal, we don’t think anything of it. The next time around through her lipstick is smudged and we may notice that her lip syncing is… Well, just a little bit off. This is ironic because the lyrics that she is meant to be syncing are “I got a lump in my throat ’cause/You’re gonna sing the words wrong.” Haha, we laugh, that’s funny. But the next time we see her she looks a lot more disheveled and the lip syncing is totally off. The fourth time we see her she is covering what seems to be a bleeding gash in her neck. I assume this is meant to be a play on the “got a lump in my throat” bit in the lyrics.
If you watch the video again, you’ll notice around 2:49 the video has the lyrics at the bottom for you. But wait! They’re obviously incorrect. Yet another literal play on the lyrics of the song. I know that there is a lot more to this video that I have yet to either notice or understand yet, but I am excited to watch it more and more to get everything! If you guys notice anything I forgot here, please share this post on the social media of your choosing and let us know!