Analysis for the music video of You Can't Be My Girl by Darwin Deez

1. Music Video Analysis
Darwin Deez – You Can’t Be My Girl

2. Andrew Goodwin
Andrew Goodwin is a musical theorist. His ideas on what makes
up a music video are as follows.
1. Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics. (e.g. Stage
performances in metal videos, or dance routines for boy bands
and girl bands)
2. A relationship between the lyrics and the visuals. (e.g. Either
illustrative, amplifying or contradicting)
3. There is a relationship between the music and the visuals.
(Either illustrative, amplifying or contradicting)
4. The demands of the record label will require lots of close ups
of the artist and the artist may develop motifs that recur across
their work. (e.g. A visual style)

3. cont
5. Frequent references to the notion of looking. As well as
voyeuristic and sexualization of women.
6. Often intertextual references to films, TV programs or other
music videos.
7. Whether each video is narrative, performance or concept
based and how each element is used.

4. Genre Characteristics
• This music video displays a few of characteristics of its genre;
indie.
• One of these characteristics are a large focus on the main
singer/guitarist. This focus is popular in indie music videos
because they generally focus more on performance than
narrative.
• However this music video is different in that it has some
narrative and a focus of the front man rather than focusing on
performance.

5. Visual/lyrical relationship
In this music video there is a
very close relationship
between the visuals and
the lyrics.
This video employs a very unique concept that I have never seen in any
other music video. It is created by getting a lot of stock footage of
what the frontman's character within the story views as unattainable.
He sees girls that are out of his league or already in relationships. He is
inserted into the background of this stock footage to create the sense
that these girls are unachievable.

6. cont
• One lyric in particular that matches the video is “Damn, what
drugs aren’t you on?
• And can I come along?” The singer would do anything to be
with her.

7. Visual/musical relationship
• There is a very close visual/musical relationship.
• One way it is a close relationship is the intro of the song there
are medium-length shots of girls on their own. As the song
goes on and you listen to the lyrics and realize about the
unattainability the footage begins to change to a man and a
woman together, with Darwin in the background.
• Another way the relationship is close is when the guitar solo
starts the camera starts shaking, the shots speed up to only
about a second each because the music becomes fast paced.
The shots also change to action/violence because it is a
representation of the singers emotions. In these shots the
people in the footage are also mostly male.

8. Shot count.
• 131.
A contrast between the regular parts of the song and the fast
paced/solo parts.

9. In this shot the line being sung is “you
cant be my girl”.
The frontman is looking at the girl and
the relationship she is in. The lyric
represents what he thinks about her.
There are multiple shots as he is singing
a long note of the word “girl”.

10. Looking
A lot of the shots in this music
video are voyeuristic in nature.
The singer is looking in to a
girls relationship from an
outside, secluded view. This
notion of looking in to
something that isn’t his makes
it voyeuristic.

11. This shot clearly shows the voyeurism that the whole video is centered around.
The singer is looking on in jealousy, looking where he shouldn’t be. It also shows
the sexualization of the conceptual woman that is in focus during this video.
The lyric he sings during this shot is ‘So wrong, but somehow you win’. This lyric
could mean that perhaps being with him is losing, since being without him is
winning. This is self depreciating and fits in with the theme that these girls are out
of his league. The ‘So wrong’ part could be how he is feeling about the situation,
to him, it is wrong and painful to look at. However he forces himself to look over
and over again in all the different shots across the video.