Guns N’ Roses – Sweet Child O’ Mine analysis

Guns N’ Roses are a Hard Rock band, you can tell this by, in the music video for ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ the fact that band are performing more than anything else, there is also fairly dark lighting when the video isn’t black and white. You can also tell that GNR are a Hard Rock band by the fact that they are in leather clothing, plus Axl has a head band.

This music video is mostly a performance based video, along with a hint of narrative. The video is performance-based due to the fact that we majority of what we see is the band performing. There is however a sense of narrative where, when talking about his ‘Sweet Child’ we see the woman that he is singing about.

The camera and editing in this music video is simplistic. The video cuts to the beat, so when the beat gets faster, the edits go with it. The most used type of edit in this video is a shot reverse shot. These cuts mostly go from Axl to Slash, and vise versa.

In this video, there isn’t much of a link between the video itself and the lyrics. This is mostly due to the video being performance-based. However, despite this there are two cases where the narrative is represented through the lyrics. This is where Axl sings “…break down and cry”, he makes a crying action on his face with his fingers. The other case is when he sings “She’s got eyes like the bluest skies”, the viewer sees the woman’s who he is singing about eyes.

The only relationship between the music and the video is where the edits get faster, when faster music is being played. IThey are cutting to the beat.

The motifs presented in this particular video are Slash’s top hat, shown whenever we see the guitarist, as well as Axl’s signature ‘dance’. In this video there is also reference to the fact that the viewer is supposed to be looking at this performance, this is due to a different camera being in shot to the one that is filming at that moment in time. This shows that the band is being watched. In this video there are not any intertextual references.

This particular music video is a performance-based video, along with a hint of narrative-based visuals.