Andrew Goodwin analysis of the music video for ‘Earthquake’ by Labrinth ft. Tinie Tempah

1)   Genre characteristics

This video is in the mainstream dance genre with aspects of electronic and more recently, rap. Here the video is edited to fit all these genres. For instance, Tinie Tempah does his verse the editing still is more punchy like that of a rap video. To account for the dance and electronic aspect, there are many zooms and slo-mo to cut to the technically slow beat, although the track feels faster.

2)   Relationship between lyrics and visuals

There is amplification of the meaning of the lyrics since the “earthquake” represents the bass speaker and this is shown through lots of bass speakers and effects, which symbolise a bass speaker.

There lyrics of the chorus are ‘I predict an earthquake up in here’ and whilst this phrase is being sung the camera will often shake or the singer will do something acrobatic like jumping or generally just move very fast.

Whilst these lyrics are being sung in the bridge, there are hooded clones of the singer, matching with the mysterious tone at that moment.

3)   Relationship between music and visuals

Similarly, as the track hits the chorus meaning the music becomes more textured and lively, the singer will do some sort of acrobatic motion. Again, there is amplification of the music since the visuals match the rhythm and beat of the music.

As the song starts with the build up in the instrumental, the visuals are of pans up and across the body of the man singer without showing his head to create enigma.

Where the music is fast paced the visuals are cut relatively quickly but the speed is fairly similar throughout the video, except during the bridge where the cuts are much slower.

4)   Close-ups of the artist and artist motifs

This track surprisingly consists of many extreme longs, and not as many close-up beauty shots as you would expect from such a mainstream music video. There are still the beauty shots of the artist from each different set up.

His sunglasses about to come up every now and then and so after researching Labrinth a little further it seems to be that glasses could be a feature of key iconography. They are part of his artist identity and add to his dress code, so when they are suddenly on it is more distinctive. It gets the audience aspiring to follow his style.

5)   Reference to notion of looking

There are many shots of him looking away and out of shot, particularly at the beginning of the video during the build up and just after it. Sometimes he wears the sunglasses so we can’t see his eyes creating enigma, however we still get the impression that he is looking in a certain direction.

6)   Intertextual references

At the beginning of the video you see him get out of a Mini Cooper, advertising this car brand through product placement. During the bridge when he is in the hood, you can withdraw connotations of Star Wars, also helped by the spherical object in the middle of the room, making it feel more futuristic and sci-fi.

7)   Performance, narrative or concept?

This is definitely performance driven since there is no narrative flow. The majority of the video is the singer dancing and allowing his outgoing, party, lively personality to show through the choreography.