Video For Analysis

I am analysing a video called This City by Patrick Stump. It also features Lupe Fiasco who is a famous rap artist. The genre of this music video is pop/rap. This is because Lupe makes the song reach out to a wider audience by collaborating with Patrick Stump who is more of a pop singer.  This video is all about the town Chicago where Patrick Stump was raised so there is a very strong narrative behind this video. As you can tell from the lyrics also ‘This City’ as in Chicago. So throughout the video we are taken back into the 80’s when they wore leather jackets to show of this wonderful city. The 80’s theme is also shown through the use of black and white colour.

Here it shows the clear difference of times. This is his city of Chicago in the 80’s.

The lyrics of the song and the visuals of the music video have a clear relationship. We see flash backs almost of all the good things that have happened to him since living in this city. The lyrics ‘I was born and raised here’ proves this point even more. We then see him looking over at kids playing in this street. This maybe what he used to do when he was a kid playing in the city. Also another lyric that is repeated a lot throughout the song and has a relationship with the visuals is ‘and I love it, yeah I love it’. This tells the watchers that Patrick Stump is very passionate about his city as he calls it and he’s trying to get that point across to others. ‘And my city was a threat to the rest’ this lyric has a very strong meaning that no other city can compare to Chicago. But because not everyone has been there these lyrics are just opinions of the singer. ‘Forget all the drugs and gang corruption and pollution’ a perfect city is hard to find and the message that he is trying to get across is that if you look past these thing for example drugs, gangs and pollution you will love you city as much as Patrick loves Chicago.

This music video doesn’t have a strong relationship between the music and the visuals. This is because the video doesn’t always cut to the beat which usually happens in most music videos. There is one section at the end where he claps his hands and the shot changes. This looks very effective also because it looks like the lights are turning on and off.

At the beginning there is also a bit when Patrick stamps his foot on the beat then all of a sudden the scene has changed from Patrick singing to him being in the city with black and white colour. It draws my attention because we wasn’t expecting to actually see what he was singing about ‘This city’.

The solo instrumental bits where Patrick Stump is singing to the music are very edited with lots of different colours and effects. At one point we can hardly see Patrick because there are so many colours going on. But I think this makes the music video looking interesting and different.


The music in this video doesn’t really change pace except when Lupe starts to rap. Here we then see a change because the cuts are more quicker and to the beat. Having the video cut to the beat of the music I think makes the whole video more thrilling and exciting as we don’t know what it’s going to cut to next.

Throughout the whole video the scene we see most is Patrick Stump performing to the music with lots of different effects. I think this way it is making Patrick the main artist of the video and this is how the record company are looking to sell this track. Like most music video’s the main artist is in the video 90% of the time. There are many close ups and different shots of Patrick the whole way through because he is the star of the video. When the beat drops Patrick changes the way he performs by jumping and really getting into the song. From this video the artist looks like a smart respectable man because he wears a suit when performing when most other artists will wear casual clothes. He also wears a bow tie with a jacket over his shoulders, he is also trying to make his outfit different from just wearing a normal suit. 

This video compares to his others one’s are very upbeat and fast in the pop genre, but his other videos are more slow and in the rock genre. This my be becase Lupe is collabrated with Patrick in 'This City’. There is a main motif with is the city which he keeps going back to throughout because if this place wasn’t in the video then the lyrics wouldn’t make a lot of sense.

This music video is mostly performance and narrative. The song is telling us a story about where he grew up and what he grew up with. Referring back to the city in every other shot change. Because it’s the actual artist singing he is performing the song and actting with the music. I would say it is mostly performance because that is what we see the most.