Personal Favourites

Snow Patrol are a British band who have many major hits in the UK.  Their 2003 album 'Final Straw' was certified as 5x Platinum, and the band have sold over 3 million copies of it worldwide.  The Northern Irish band had huge success with this hit 'Chasing Cars'.

What do I love about this video?


This is one of the most simple ideas for a music video.  The director has essentially taken one line of the song "if I lay here would you lie with me?" and placed the lead singer in difference places every time he sings this lyric.  This such a simple idea, and yet it makes for a good video, where we just see people walking over the singer as he obstructs their way in various settings, such as on a train, at the top of an escalator and in the middle of the road. 

One of the really interesting things about this video is that the shots are actually quite long, but this fits with the mood and style of the song.  Normally, longer shots create a sluggish, boring video, and, let's face it, this video wouldn't win an award for being the most exciting video ever made.  But it still works well, and more importantly doesn't detract from the lyrics.  If anything, it adds to them, giving a visual representation of him lying down, asking if she would lie with him and "just forget the world".

As with most music videos, we have CUs of the face of the lead singer, again creating a sort of relationship between the viewer and the band.  To stop this video from becoming boring, the director has chosen to use a lot of shots that zoom in or out, thus keeping the action still rolling, despite the shots being relatively long.

What I really love about this video is that it allows the song to sell itself.  The video doesn't make the song into something that it isn't; if anything, it strips it back to the bar bones, and allows the song's lyrics and meaning to shine through, which is a factor, I think, that made this song so popular.