Narrative Music Videos Research

A narrative music video is a video that has a clear storyline which is easy to follow. While many narrative videos contain lip synching, they lack the presence of microphones, instruments, and an audience, which makes them easily distinguishable from Performance music videos.

Some examples of narrative music videos are...

The All-American Rejects- Gives You Hell

Green Day- Wake Me Up When September Ends

Ed Sheeran- Give Me Love

Narrative music videos can vary between telling a story that reflects the lyrics and genre of the song, to surprising the audience by depicting a storyline that appears to be irrelevant to the lyrics. 
Sometimes, the artist is featured in the music video as themselves, and the video includes lip synching. Other times, the artist plays a character in the video (for example, The All-American Rejects 'Gives You Hell' video where the lead singer plays two characters), or the artist is not in the video at all (for example, Royal Blood's 'Figure It Out' video).

The All-American Rejects- Gives You Hell

Royal Blood- Figure It Out

Many narrative music videos contain performance elements or clips of the artist/band lip synching. An example of this is in Green Day's 'Wake Me Up When September Ends', where scenes of the band performing are included in between narrative shots.This contrasts with Ed Sheeran's 'Give Me Love' music video, where the narrative is the sole focus of the video, and the artist is only on screen very briefly, and is not lip synching.

Green Day- Wake Me Up When September Ends

Ed Sheeran- Give Me Love

Narrative music videos often use flash forward shots at the beginning of the video in order to capture the viewer's attention and make them want to continue watching. For example, at the beginning of Taylor Swift's 'I Knew You Were Trouble' music video, the artist is lying in a deserted festival ground. Short flashback clips appear on screen in bursts, keeping the audience's interest in the video, and making them want to keep watching to find out how the artist ended up alone in the deserted festival ground. The same technique is used in Ed Sheeran's 'Give Me Love' music video- it opens showing an a dead angel, clearly shot by an arrow. The audience would want to keep watching the video in order to find out how the angel died.

Taylor Swift- I Knew You Were Trouble

Ed Sheeran- Give Me Love