Lily Allen- LDN

The video opens with an establishing shot of a dingy looking shop with garbage bags and trash piled outside; this sets the audience up to expect a rundown setting or a downbeat song. However when it cuts to Lily Allen inside the shop looking at CD’s the whole atmosphere of the video becomes brighter, she’s wearing a bright red dress and the inside of the shop looks bright, this throws the audience off from their initial ideas about the video and makes us think that maybe she’s in a different shop before she walks out and reveals that it is in fact the same shop, this confuses the audience slightly however the lyrics reveal the reasons behind the video. Before she walks out of the shop there is another shot of the outside of the shop looking dingy and run down, however when she steps out of the shop it changes so its brighter and there isn’t any garbage and trash outside, this suggests that she has a bright character or personality because it only changes as she walks out of the shop, it could also be showing how she sees things as she walks down the road because as she’s walking everything in front of her is nice and bright and shows nice scenarios or objects, however when she walks past the things change to unattractive or disgusting things and the brightness changes so that there’s very little colour, this shows the message that she’s trying to convey in the song, and the video directly links to the lyrics, “When you look with your eyes, everything looks nice, but if you look twice, you can see it’s all a lie” The message in the song shows us her outspoken personality, some of her lyrics are shocking to the audience “then I see it’s a pimp and his crack whore”, she does this to show her loud, outspoken nature nature. As the camera pans following her down the street we get close ups of things she steps over; she steps over some daisies and it turns into dog mess, this shows us how she’s saying London city lies, it isn’t what people think/expect it to be.

There’s a sense of sarcasm from lily in the chorus “oh why oh why would I wanna’ be anywhere else” this adds an edge to the seriousness of the song’s lyrics, she adds humour to the song by doing this showing us her humorous nature and giving the audience a view of her which makes her stand out from other artists. This song shows how she’s unwilling to hold back from speaking her mind, as her second song it introduced her outspoken nature to her audience and is now something she is known for.