Music Video Forms: Narrative

Sam Smith – I’m Not The Only One (Narrative)

 

The message behind this video is that her husband is cheating on her with another woman; he’s having an affair. The video shows the lies and deceit and shows the heartbreak that the wife goes through as she finds out and knows what he’s doing. The video starts off with the wife offering breakfast and the husband leaving quickly hence even from the beginning we get the sense that the video is about the downfall of their relationship. As well as this, it starts off quite normal with the birds singing etc. and this allows us as an audience to see that something is going to go wrong because it seems too good to be true. Throughout the video we get a variety of different scenes. It switches from the wife to the husband and what is happening in both their lives; we see two sides of the story and of their relationship. We see the wife crying and burning his clothes whereas we see the husband drinking and having sex with another woman, all whilst the wife is drinking alone and crying. The fact it switches ensures that the audience are aware of the fact that the wife knows about what he’s doing. This therefore leads the audience to sympathise with the wife because we know that she is heartbroken and distraught about what he’s doing with someone else. These all relate back to the song and lyrics because it is about someone knowing that their other half is cheating on them. This is why all the emotions within the song and lyrics are evoked through the music video because we see this anger, hate yet disappointment and sadness that we may not necessarily get from just listening to the song – it visualises the lyrics. At the end of the song however, it essentially goes back to the beginning so she walks out of the house seemingly happy and ends where she started; hiding her true emotions so she doesn’t ruin this ‘perfect’ life she has with him. This cyclical structure is significant because it shows that she can’t / doesn’t want to get out of their relationship.