Arctic Monkeys were formed in 2002 in High Green, a suburb of Sheffield, the band currently consists of Alex Turner (lead vocals, rhythm guitar), Jamie Cook (lead guitar), Nick O'Malley (bass guitar, backing vocals) and Matt Helders (drums, backing vocals). The band’s debut album ‘Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not’ became the fastest-selling debut album of British music history “When The Sun Goes Down” was only the second single by the band, and was released on 16 November 2005. The single was a hit and went straight to no.1 in the UK charts following the success of their first single. The video was directed by Paul Fraser, and was premiered on the 21st of December 2005. The video starred Lauren Socha and Stephen Graham. The music video used footage from a longer film, Scummy Man, which used the same actors who appeared in the music video to tell the story of 'Nina', the nameless "that girl there" from the song. The song falls into the Alternative rock genre, which is a very broad genre of music, giving it many characteristics. When The Sun Goes Down expresses some of these characteristics, such as lyrics addressing a topic of social concern, which in this case is prostitution and abuse. The music video is both concept and narrative based, the concept of the video being prostitution, and throughout the video we see the relationship between a young girl and a man providing the narrative part to the video.
The relationship between lyrics and visuals are mainly illustrative; the visuals on screen explain the lyrics and illustrate them. They are also amplified at some points throughout the music video. Straight away once the song has started, the lyrics of the first line are illustrated; “So Who's that girl there? I wonder what went wrong, So that she had to roam the streets”, as this is sung we see a young girl stood firstly in the snow, and then in what looks to be a block of council flats up against some railings in freezing cold conditions looking pretty rough. These images literally put pictures to the words, creating a perfect picture of the artist’s thoughts when they were writing the song. Another good example of the lyrics being illustrated comes in the form of the line “ She makes a subtle proposition, "I'm sorry love I'll have to turn you down" “. In the video we see the young girl playing a prostitute asking a passerby if he’d be interested, seeing her disappointment and desperation when she’s turned down. Throughout the song there are a few parts where the lyrics are amplified by the visuals on screen to really exaggerate the lyrics to the viewers. The best example of this is in the last few lines of the first chorus where we hear “They said it changes when the sun goes down”, we are introduced to a very strange character playing a gothic magician, practicing different tricks, enhancing the viewers perception of the lyrics.
Paul Fraser (director) has done an excellent good job with the editing of this music video, changing the pace of the visuals accordingly to the tempo of the song itself throughout. The first 55 or so seconds of the song consist of long extended notes on the guitar, the cuts don’t seem to be in sync with these notes exactly, but they do reflect the tempo of the song, using long takes of each shot before cutting to another. After this 55 seconds of slow tempo the song suddenly drops to a much quicker tempo, and in correlation with this the visuals also speed up dramatically. At the beginning of this change in tempo there is a 25 second instrumental, where we see someone driving along a road from their perspective, this footage has been speeded up during the editing stages, providing a very fast pace to the video. During this instrumental we also see some footage of the young prostitute, but each shot is very short and cuts on the beat of a snare drum being hit. The tempo very slightly slows down after this instrumental, and the cuts become only slightly longer. The tempo increases for every chorus and slightly drops for the verses, with the visuals reflecting these changes. For the last 26 seconds of the song the tempo returns to how it was originally at the start of the song, to a very slow tempo, with long notes, and once again the shots are long and the cuts are not quite in sync with the music.
When The Sun Goes Down was only the second single produced by the Arctic Monkeys, so obviously the music video was only the second video for one of their songs. Although their first and only single before When The Sun Goes Down was UK no.1 , the band were still reasonably un-known as individuals, people knew their previous work, but not the band themselves. So this was a good opportunity to create an image for the band and get their faces out there...An idea it seemed the band weren’t too keen on. Through the entire video we only see the band on two moments for split seconds, loading a car with their instruments. But through doing this, and choosing to really explain the lyrics of the song with their video, rather than attract attention to themselves, it has created an image for the band without involving them as such. Both the video and the song give the viewers the feeling of the band being a rough suburban band, and a sense of their raw talent, with a passion for music rather than the fame that comes with it. The record label has focused more so on promoting the single then the band with this music video.
Within the song there is an intertextual reference to the song ‘Roxanne’ sung by The Police in 1978, with the lyrics ‘And he told Roxanne to put on her red light’. The ‘red light’ part to the line referring to the famous red light district in Amsterdam, where there are many prostitutes. The words within the song sung by The Police say “Roxanne, you don’t have to put on the red light” advising the girl not to sell herself. But the lyrics in When The Sun Goes Down twists the classic line from this song and explains a man telling a girl the opposite, to be the prostitute she is. This intertextual reference is a very good way to help the audience understand the idea and meaning to the song.
Paul Fraser has done a very good job directing this video, illustrating the lyrics to the song excellently and creating the gritty and dirty vibe that the song gives off, and also in a way that the band stand for. He has created an interesting and well pieced together video that promotes the single rather than the band explaining what the Arctic Monkeys are about, the music.
Jake Stout.
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