Music Video Analysis- Kid British (Our House Is Dadless)

Kid British - Our House Is Dadless

This 2009 track from Manchester, Modern SKA/Pop band, Kid British, received 527,856 Views on YouTube.

The band members grew up on council estates in Manchester and were keen to let everyone know this with there first single, Our house is Dadless, which samples the famous Madness track, Our House.

The video is mainly concept based and follows the life of how it is to grow up in these areas. They have used many different shots to show this. In my opinion i think that the most effective are the first establishing, aerial shots. They show that the song applies to many people, all over. It also introduces the story of their chaotic houses on these massive estates.

The lyrics suit the visuals in the video and tell the story well. An example of this is the lyrics 'I can smell that bacon cooking, And mum's downstairs doing that weekly washing, Singing along she's got that Motown rocking. And i'm shouting out ‘mum turn it down', Cos i'm tryna sleep right now, Argh forget it I was getting up anyway, Man I can't get a lie in any day.'

Here is a TubeChop clip to show how the narrative and visuals in the video, represent those of the lyrics. http://www.tubechop.com/watch/200602

The beginning of the video shows a relationship between the music and the visuals, when one of the band members, turns the radio off that is playing part of the sampling track 'Our House'. Here is the clip that explains this, http://www.tubechop.com/watch/200604 

The video is almost very genre specific. It adopts the style of some madness videos, mixing the narrative and performance very well. The genre of SKA is all about being real and looking about the real society. This video is very much about that. Its not about showing the glamorous pop-star life, its about showing things like the social-economic conditions and making them acceptable. 

Kid British show the good and bad parts of living on a council estate in Manchester in the modern era, so i think that they have managed to create a Genre Specific Video.

There is not a lot of intertexuality to analyse apart from the obvious sampling and the adopted style of film, following from the madness style. 

We are invited into a world that some people don't understand, or who cannot relate to. 

Overall i would like to use some ideas from this and use it in my music video. I think the way that they take a midshot of each character after their particular scene is a good technique to focus on the detail of all the different characters.