Analysing Music Videos 4

Sia - The Greatest


Sia's music video for her song 'The Greatest' is a powerful music video which compliments the message that she is attempts to spread in her song. The music video was made as a with the main idea to help raise awareness to support the LGBT community and most importantly to show support and tribute to the 49 victims of the terrorist shoot attack in Orlando that happened on the 12th of June this year. Immediately this makes the music video stand out and differ from the usual music videos we see on a day-to-day basis.



The music video begins with an actress wiping her face with the rainbow flag which symbolises the LGBT community. She has a high contrast of lighting on here face, as only her face is half lit. This could highlight both the high good times and bad times that the community faces. Its is then followed by slow motion dancing which suggests the serious message of the song.

The lighting in the video is very low key due to the sad undertone in the song and to complete the eerie/weird look that the dancers were giving. The lighting was a dingy grey/black however towards the end when the dancers came all together we had green and red lighting in a dark room which helped make the dancers stand out and seem powerful and hopeful. This contributes to the message that the message Sia is portraying in her song.


There is very simplistic editing in this video. For the majority of the song, the use of tracking is used. As we reach towards the end of the music video, the techniques gradually get more complicated as different angles are used as well as a large variety of shots.

The music video seems to be set in an abandoned home. The protagonist dances around the building into different rooms and joins different dancers. Other dancers will be on the floor, looking half dead. There is not much in terms of what is in the Mise-en-scene due to focal point of the videos being on the dancers. However there was decorative furniture on the walls such as broken/wonky photo frames and clocks suggesting that there used to be people living there; the building had a purpose, this could link to the lives that was lost in the bombings earlier this year (tribute aspect).

Due to the actors/dancers being young in the music and the meaning of the song, it was unsuitable to use the male gaze as an aspect for this video. Moreover, this means that gender did not stand out in the video and was not used to entice people to watch the video/popularise the song.

However, the role of institution and audience played a large role into the video. Sia's record label RCA Records Label, have signed with pop artists such as Taylor Swift, Kelly Clarkson, Justin Timberlake, P!nk and Zayn Malik. It is noticeable that for the female artists that are signed with this label, their music videos focus on female empowerment,or have important storylines. Whereas the males have mildly sexualised music videos. In this case, "The Greatest" music video proves my point. Alongside this, Sia's audience got what they expected, as the video focused on the lyrical dancer Maddie Ziegler, and was set in an abandoned/empty house. The music video was given a twist with the other dancers and the lighting.