Indie Music Video Analysis

Maroon 5 - 'Won't Go Home Without You'

'Won't Go Home Without You' is a performance/narrative music video, which is mainly performance, and the narrative increases as the video goes on. We see the lead singer singing the words throughout most of the video, there are only a few shots where he is not singing.

There are many close ups of the lead singer's face, this helps the audience to identify with him and how he is feeling, and the representation of looking int

o his eyes makes it a personal situation in which we as an audien

ce can see into his mind.

Flashbacks are used in this video, and the video begins with one, the audience can tell they are flashbacks because unlike the rest of the video they are in black and white - connoting the past and things that have happened previously. In the flashbacks the lead singer is not singing and performing the words, showing that the song is in

the present and the lead singer is looking back at something which has already happened, which is to do with a woman we presume the song is about and that he is in love with, as it i

s a love song.

The effect of the flashbacks in this video is that the audience get some background to do with how the singer got to where he is in the present in the video. We see how him and the woman 'broke up' which is what we assume as in the flash backs they are together and in the present narrative the singer is walking through the streets and into a restaurant to find her. The lyrics also suggest that they are no longer together through the lyrics "But now it's far too late, she's gone away". We also see at

the end of the video in the present, the woman sitting with another man at a table in a restaurant, when the lead singer finally finds her.

The narrative of the story i

s the man walking through streets to find the woman, this amplifies the lyrics, as in the song he sings about wanting her back "I asked her to stay, but she wouldn't listen" and "Just give me one more chance to make it right... I won't go home without you".

So in this way the video supports Goodwin's Theory of music videos, as the visuals are amplifying the lyrics.

At parts in the video the visuals also show a relationship between the visuals and the music, which also supports Goodwin's Theory of music videos; for example at the beginning of the video the visuals are in black and white while it is in the past, and then when the drum beat comes in the visuals turn into colour and the present.