Music Video Analysis (Holiday Homework)

Music Video Analysis – Rihanna

Rihanna is a pop/R&B artist, and you can see this through her music videos. She follows the conventions of her genre, to some extent as further on in her career her image and music videos became more controversial. Firstly, she is always very materialistic in her videos, wearing jewellery, driving expensive cars and flashing the latest technology. The locations which the videos are set are also typical of an R&B artist; the beach, clubs, the streets etc.

At the beginning of Rihanna’s career, her image was a lot more innocent, although still sexual as she was always wearing revealing clothing. In one of her first music videos ‘SOS’ the main focus of the video is the dance routines. Firstly she dances on the beach in a low-cut dress with female dancers and further into the song, it switches to another room and she is wearing a black lace outfit dancing with male dancers suggestively. The images below show these scenes, sex appeal is the most important factor in the music video as this will help the single to sell. Nothing out of the ordinary happens in the video, it is mostly just Rihanna dancing and singing. However, the song itself was criticised regarding originality, and she had been commonly be compared to Beyonce.

One of Rihanna’s most recent and controversial music videos to date is ‘We Found Love’. The video shows Rihanna in an up-and-down relationship and shows images of drugs, pills and pupils dilating. The main themes of the video are sex, drugs and violence and so received criticism, suggesting the video is a bad influence to young girls. The audience can see how much Rihanna has grown as an artist and how much she has changed, touching upon personal experiences and difficult issues that affect many of today’s population. It is thought that her love interest in this video is supposed to resemble Chris Brown, her ex-boyfriend who violently attacked her. This video reflects today’s society showing things such as skateboarding, shop-lifting, and a festival type party. Towards the end of the video Rihanna leaves her violent boyfriend when he is passed out on the floor of their flat, and it ends with her crying in the corner of a room. It shows how she has grown and is willing to face the issues that many people have to deal with. The style of music is also different from her earlier material, with this song being more electro/dance than R&B. 

In the ‘We Found Love’ video, the editing and camerawork has helped to create the chaos effect. The cross-cutting of the images of drugs and the pupils dilating shows the audience that the characters are clearly on drugs and the effect they are having on their relationship, making it more violent. It also a very fast-paced video, showing many things happening at once, with the music being very fast also it reflects the relationship in the story. In SOS while she is dancing with a male dancer, the camera jumps from a zoom to a wide shot continuously, showing the scene and changing in time with the music. Her music videos have become more controversial and sexual, with her video for S&M being banned in 11 countries. She is definitely a unique artist now, having changed her style of music and the way she represents her image.   



I chose to do my holiday homework on Rihanna as I was unsure on the artist and song I was going to use for my coursework. Although Rihanna is of a different genre to Marina and the Diamonds I think it has been useful to research her and analyse her videos as it has helped me to understand the meanings in videos and how narrative can change the audience's perception of a song.