Textual Analysis of Gwen Stefani's "What You Waiting For"

An artist we focused alot on when looking at what makes a "good" music video was Gwen Stefani.

Here I have decided to do a textual analysis on the video for "What You Waiting For" directed by Francis Lawrence. Who has directed many popular music video's for successful artists such as;

Jay-z "girls best friend"
Destiny's Child- Independent Women"

Aerosmith- Jaded
Britney Spears- I'm A Slave 4 U
Shakira- Whenever, Wherever
Michelle Branch- Goodbye to you
Avril Lavigne- Sk8er Boi
Jennifer Lopez- Jenny from the block
Justin Timberlake- Rock your body

In this particular video I liked how the conceptual theme of Alice in Wonderland is used in co-operation of the physical meaning of the lyrics. The full length video begins with Gwen expressing her trouble with the album needing "inspiration" and going to get help for her "writers block" amongst the lyrics "How did the years go by, Now it's only me".

Then once she is transported into the fantsay world the lyric's "Naturally, I'm worried if I do it alone Who really cares, cause it's your life You never know, it could be great Take a chance cause you might grow" which express her deeper troubles are jux-taposed and perhaps tvialised against an exciting concept based video.

It works so well becuase of the detailed costumes and sets which really do it justice. Something we would like to include in our own music video but budget and practicality will restrain what we can competantly create. Concept however is something that does not have to be extravagant and a theme which we are really keen to include in our music video.

This video continues to import meaning into the lyrics whilst Gwen is stuck in a fantasy world by cross cutting between the fantasy world and her in the recording studio to remind the audience what the song is really about. The fantay world is also not just for show, i think the images of her being stuck in a too small doll house etc show her inhibitions about the record, especially when teamed with the lyrics "You got your million-dollar contract And they're all waiting for your hot track, What you waiting for?".

These two strong ideas I feel work really well within this video and i hope to make a video as entertaining and in keeping with the song. This video was very successful getting over 2,401,3oo views on you tube of this one post alone (as on you tube you usually find the same thing posted several times) and the video was referred to by Stylus magazeine as "I sigh with admiration and wish every video was this alive" and won the award At the 2005 MTV Video Music Awards, for Best Art Direction and was nominated for Best editing.

I really like the extreme use of colours and costumes within this video as it suits Gwen's excentric personality and makes the video very entertaining. the variation of material and camera angle keeps the video moving wiht the song beat a sit is very fast. the series of edits which fade to black excell this feling during the middle of the song when the temp slows slightly. Another thing I like about this video is that almost every lyric is lip sync-ed. I think music video's work much better when the artist "sings" every line within the video as it includes some performance, and as music video's are big selling points for the artist I think it is important that the audience makes the connection berween the artist and the song. Also it allows for the feeling within the audience that the song is being directly sung to you- if the lyrics are not lip synch-ed i think the video then looses some of its impact and becomes less engageing, almost like just another video. Lip syncing also allows for many conventional, tightly framed closeups of the artist which I think are effective and essential to a professional looking music video; again the audience wants to see the artisit.

This was a very succesful concept based video and gives me lots of indirect inspiration for my own video; I am not going to copy the concept used but am excited about the consept I will hopefully be able to use in my own video to create a music video as entertainig and different.