Video Music Analysis – G.R.L Ugly Heart

Song: Ugly Heart

Album: G.R.L

Artist: G.R.L

Released: June 3rd 2014

Producers: Dr Luke and

Cirkut

Writers: Ryan Baharloo Ester Dean, Lukasz

Gottwald, John Charles Monds

Henry Walter

The music video for G.R.L’s debut single ‘Ugly Heart’ highlights a relationship between the

visuals and lyrics. The music video depicts the young artists getting arrested after tattooing

‘ugly’ across a man’s face. The video is centred on them been taken to prison whilst singing

‘Ugly Heart’. The track is about a guy who appears to be beautiful on the outside however

later displays his ‘ugly heart’. The band members all thought that many women would be

able to relate/learn from this song and hoped it would inspire women and men to find

someone who treats them well.

The music video tells a linear, proairetic/action code narrative. At the beginning you can

hear the diegetic sound effect of a tattoo needle which matches with the visual of a tattoo

shop sign. The track begins to play and you see the 5 girls being escorted out by police

officers. The audience doesn’t know why they have been arrested which leads to the

anticipation of their actions but after the step by step narrative of them going to jail, at the

end of the video you find out what they had done which was tattooing ‘ugly’ across a guy’s

face, which again conforms to the lyrics.

This music video conforms to Goodwin’s idea of music videos and having a relationship

between the music and video. It is a song in the pop genre and therefore the track is quite

happy and upbeat which matches the video perfectly. Stereotypically, ‘love songs’ are

about a girls hearts getting broke however this song challenges the music industries

stereotypical view on love songs and substitutes the ‘broken heart’ for ‘women power’. As

you can see from their body language and facial expressions they appear to be happy and

carefree about getting arrested because all that matters is that they are out of a un

healthy relationship and the guy is left ugly, as quoted at the end of the song, ‘Now your

face is like your heart. Ugly.’

A deep focus in a scene in the music video shows each of the 5 girls having multiple close

ups of their faces. This supports Goodwin’s idea of many companies demanding lots of

close ups of the artists faces. This obviously is important in a debut single so the audience

can see what they look like. It also creates a brand identity, and shows that each individual

singer has their own style and look grasping attention of a large audience profile.

This music video also demonstrates the stereotypical pop music video choreographed

dance routine. This is very common in pop music videos, especially girl bands. The dance

routine is only for the chorus as this particular part of the song, is when most people are

listening and know the lyrics. Furthermore certain dance moves are to the beat of the song

such as when they punch the air the bass drops with the action representing women

power.