Analyses of Pop Promos: Blink 182 - Miss you

Video directed by: Jonas Akerlund



The general feel of Blink 182 song "I miss you" (Feb 2004) is quite sombre, downbeat and dark - this is reflected throughout the music video. Regarding Mes-en-scene, almost everything portrayed is gothic and dark. Location wise, Blink 182 are filmed playing the song in a mist surrounded castle on a stormy night, within this castle we see a number of gothic, almost ghostly like women who we also see outside the castle. Other things we see throughout the video include spiders, wolves, roses, Siamese cats, broken glass and a lake - the band are dressed in 1920's suites and are wearing pale make-up, all of these have gothic connotations and suite the dark feel of the song. I think this song and video stand out from the rest of their work because usualy they are quite playful and creative with their videos (see video for Whats my age again for example where the band are running through a town and performing naked. )

The editing and visual effects also help to create a ghostly feel, scenes fade into each other and a lot of the images are blurred. Alot of the shots are very quick and flashy, apart from when focus is on the band, and there is a range of jump cuts, it could be suggested that this use of cinematography project a nightmare feel.
There is a close relationship between the music and the visuals as through most of it we physically see the band playing, and the dark, sombre feel of the music is projected visually. However, unlike in some videos, there is not a very close relationship between the lyrics and visuals. The only evidence of this is when the line "Your already the voice inside my head" is sung, we see a woman fading - this could be a visual of her fading out of his mind, spiders are also mentioned in the lyrics but apart from that we only see a variation of unrelated gothic images.

There arnt any obvious use of intertextuality within this video - however the lyrics "We can live like jack and sally" and "we'll have Halloween on Christmas" are inspierd by Tim Burtons film Nightmare before Christmas. This pop promo is mainly performance based rather than narrative - as alot of it is takes of the band playing, I think the video is a good way to promote the band as it still keeps their new rock genre, but it is a darker version of their usual light-hearted, comical videos and shows they can be versatile.




Watch video here!