Music Video Analysis - Sixx: A.M 'This Is Gonna Hurt'

This music video looks both into the creation and delivery of the title track of the album 'This is gonna hurt'. The first thing that needs to be mentioned is the inter-textual reference that the album was released alongside bassist Nikki Sixx's book titled the same name. The book aimed to look into the lives of people who are considered to have abnormalities and in this video scenes of where the inspirations from the book are denoted in the narrative shots.This ultimately connotes to the audience that the band are sensitive towards many issue's such as abnormality and this could help the band to reach out to an audience which wouldn't usually listen to their music. Furthermore it connotes synergy between the book publishers and the band due to the fact that both of the pieces of media text interlink with each other and therefore this will create greater publicity as people who have read the book will want to listen to the album and visa versa.

In terms of costume the vocalist and lead guitarist are both stereotypical of the genre as they are represented wearing jeans and plain tops whereas bassist Nikki Sixx's costume is much more eccentric and over his huge career he has became an icon for many reasons including this. This also carries the inter-textual reference that Sixx is also part of the band Motley Crue who would all often wear highly eccentric costumes. However, his 'wild' hair as well as many aspects of his costume have led to many audiences copying his style and so this links in many ways to the uses and gratification of escapism and personal identity as audiences may use this costume style as inspiration to escape from their usual identity. In many ways this contrasts to the message of the music video due to the fact that it is trying to tell people to embrace their identity no matter what their own flaws are.

Furthermore the overt editing of a greyscale filter, used during montages of footage denoting characters with abnormalities, makes these shots seem extremely effective as the filter foreshadows the grey message in which the song is trying to deliver. These scenes are clearly not directed at passive audience members as the band are trying to get people to think about what they are seeing and to be emotional about the abnormal characters. To add to this it connotes that the band refuse to conform to the stereotype of having 'normal' characters, who would better fit theories such as the Male/female gaze, or who the audience would be likely to build personal relationships with; instead they aim to use abnormal characters that challenge the media's concept of beauty/normality. In fact this actually leads to a much wider target audience as the video isn't just directed at a specific demographic profile and instead can be effective with audiences of different age/race/gender etc.

Throughout the video there is fast paced editing which is stereotypical of a music video of the rock/metal genre. This fast paced editing can mainly be scene during the performance shots as it connotes the intensity of one of the bands gigs. This feeling of intensity is further created by the lighting as many of the colours are saturated and the natural colour of the performance shots are darkened. This takes away many of the flashing lights that you would expect from a rock show and instead replaces them with the idea that the song/band isn't about flashing lights and fame but instead delivering the deep and intense message that the lyrics of the song intend. The editing is synchronous with the tempo of the sound in the music video and this creates ambience for audiences when they are watching the music video.