This document provides a textual analysis of the music video for "Heartbreak Anniversary" by Giveon. It summarizes the key elements of the music video including the casting of Giveon and Samantha Logan as the main characters, the locations featured representing places young adult couples would go, and the costumes being styled in a way popular in the early 2000s. The narrative depicts the relationship from its beginning to the breakup and aftermath. Flashbacks to happier times are shown in black and white. Silhouettes and smaller framed flashbacks are used to generate emotion and move the story. Soundtracks and edits are carefully chosen to further develop meaning and the relationship between visuals and lyrics.

1. HEARTBREAK ANNIVERSARY –
GIVEON
Textual Analysis 2

2. CASTING
For this music video, Giveon casted himself as one of the
main characters that is presented. This is done to make sure
that the artist is presented in their music video so audiences
can easily depict who the singer is.
• Giveon
• Samantha Logan
Target audiences for this music video would be teenagers
and young adults. For this reason, audiences of that
demographic would easily identify Samantha Logan who
starred in popular TV Shows such as 13 Reasons Why as well
as the well known film Truth or Dare. This would attract fans
of the actress therefore expanding the target audience.

3. LOCATIONS AND
COSTUMES
In this music video there is a total of 8 different
location which is shown. This includes a train track, car
park, and the different room inside a house. As this
music video is based on an older couple in the young
20s, the locations are associated with where young
adult couples would typically go out an explore. As
this is a heart break song, there is the stereotypical
assumption that when someone is heartbroken they
would drive to an empty space at night and listen to
music in their car. This is shown in the music video
when Giveon had driven to an empty car park space.
Looking at the type of car used, we can assume that
the music video is based off on the early 2000s.
Therefore, we can see that the outfits used in the
video are styles which may have been popular in the
2000s such as Jordan 1 which also a popular fashion
trend today as well.

4. NARRATIVE
• This particular music video
depicts the story of a
relationship from finding love
together to the breakup and its
aftermath
• This ballad finds Giveon still
missing his ex on the first
anniversary of their break up
• But he still wonders if his
former lover still thinks about
him, and he hopes she might
return
• The music video is both
performance and narrative
based

5. LYRICS
• “Balloons are deflatin’ guess they look
lifeless like me”
• The lack of furniture in the room and
lightning represents the lyrics of how he is
‘lifeless’ as there is no light within him
• This makes the audience feel sympathy
towards him as he feels incomplete
without his girlfriend.
• This use of the simile shows evidence of
Andrew Goodwin’s theory of there being a
relationship between the visuals and the
lyrics
• It also goes against he stereotypes of men
when it comes to heartbreaks as men are
normally depicted to be aggressive or
consume alcohol

6. LYRICS
• “Just like the day that I met you”
• When singing this line, as there is a
reference to the past, a flashback scene is
produced in black and white rather than
colour to represent the past
• This scene is contrasting the previous
shots of the couple arguing as it is looking
back in time as to when they were happy
• This assumption reinforces Barthes
semiotics theory that the media constructs
meaning through the process of
denotation and connotation, in which we
read the media imagery in the same way
we read conventional language
• This is something that I particularly liked
and wish to incorporate the feature of a
flashback into my own music video

7. CAMERA SHOTS
• Silhouettes are predominately used through out
this music video
• This may demonstrate how empty they feel after
the breakup and how they would enter a dark
period of their life until they’ve found love again
which would result into the silhouettes featuring
colour instead
• I find this technique very impactful when
generating emotions and creating a narrative
that would construct the audience to possess
and dominate reading

8. EDITING
• When comparing the shots, we can see that the
scenes which refer to the flash back have a
smaller frame than the ones which represent
present day
• It can be suggested that this is done to make
the flashbacks appear as they are being played
on an old television screen with a smaller frame.
As in the past music videos were only available
on MTV music video channel on TV

9. SOUNDTRACK
• During the opening scene diegetic sound of the train passing by is present. This could have
been done to demonstrate that heartbreak is something that happens in real life and not just
in movies and tv shows. It also brings light to the area that they live in a more lower middle
class environment.
• When comparing the soundtrack to the visuals, most of the scenes tend to change on the
third beat of the bar that is being played to help develop emotion