The King Blues - Headbutt

My favourite music video would probably be for the song Headbutt by The King Blues. The King Blues are a punk band who mix various forms of music together such as ska, folk, and punk. The singer, Jonny 'Itch' Fox has been known to use self-written poetry in the songs to give a more personal approach to the music. The song is featured on the album Punk & Poetry (2011). The video itself is a very simple one, but it helps to emphasise the meaning of the song, which is about a girl that he loved. While this goes against the topic punk songs would normally focus on, the mix of punk and folk allows this to work well.

 

The video shows the singer performing the song throughout in different run-down areas, which gives it a very cheap feel, but this fits the vocal and instrumental style of the genre, as it has a very 'unpolished' quality. The video itself mostly takes place in a single location, a rooftop, and has slight use of imagery to match the song. The chorus of the song is:



I said to all my mates, she won't make a monkey out of me
But when she kissed me it felt like a headbutt
It felt like a headbutt

 

This section has imagery matched to this, by having a monkey in almost all shots of the video with the singer, as well as frequently touching his head or hat when he says 'it felt like a headbutt'.

The video itself has very little story, being a performance video. This does not stop it from showing imagery, as stated above, and using cuts and unrelated shots to effectively add to the video. The video itself is shot in very few locations, mainly taking place on a rooftop with a few additional areas, such as a small kitchen and a red wall, to add some variation to the video.

This video appeals to me because of its simplicity. It shows that you do not need a big budget or fancy settings to make an effective video, and that a good video could be made using only a camera and a few friends.

This video also shows that the conventions for this genre of music are very simple. The videos I have seen in this genre tend to be very simplistic, looking as if they are filmed with handheld cameras in the open areas rather than in studios. This will be very helpful for me, as it makes it easier to create a music video which could be closer to the standards of my genre than other ones would be.

This has influenced my work greatly, as it proves to me that it would be easy to produce a good music video in this genre, as videos for The King Blues and others in this genre, such as Frank Turner, all follow a style model which gives them a low budget, improvised approach.