The Jam were an English punk rock/new wave/mod revival band. While they shared the "angry young men" outlook and fast tempos of their punk rock contemporaries. The Jam wore smartly tailored suits rather than ripped clothes, and they incorporated a number of mainstream 1960s rock and R&B influences rather than rejecting them, placing The Jam at the forefront of the mod revival movement.
The Style Council were an English band, formed in Woking in 1983 by Paul Weller himself, (the former singer and guitarist with The Jam), and keyboardist Mick Talbot. The permanent line-up grew to include drummer Steve White and Weller's then-wife, vocalist Dee C. Lee. As with Weller's previous band, most of his London based outfit's hits were in their homeland, although the band did score six top 40 hits in Australia, and seven top 40 hits in New Zealand.
Weller went from The Jam to The Style Council as he wanted a change from the "power pop" style to the more soulful style and it gave him the chance to infuse jazz/soul/funk and even a little rap into his songs. In terms of target audience and fans, Weller tended to have a strong fan base from the beginning that followed his every move between bands and onto his solo career.
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Paul Weller released his first solo album, Paul Weller, in 1991. After leaving label Polydor in 1989, Weller formed The Paul Weller Movement in 1990, releasing a single, Into Tomorrow, on his own Freedom High record label in October 1991. Its success - reaching #36 in the UK chart, led to Weller being offered a new record deal with Go! Discs, and the resulting album was released on 1st September 1992, reaching #8 on the UK album chart.
Weller's second album, Wild Wood, was released in September 1993. It made it to number 2 in the UK charts, and contained three UK hits; Wild Wood, Sunflower and Hung Up, all reaching within the top 20. The music video I will be critiquing is Wild Wood, which is a single from the album. At the time that the video was released, Weller was signed to Go! Discs, which was a London based record label launched in 1983 by Andy Macdonald and Lesly Symons. Shortly after the launch, Go! Beat records was launched as a subsidiary for dance artists like Beats International, Gabrielle and Portishead. In 1992, Paul Weller signed.
Throughout this video we see a number of different filming and editing techniques that were very common within the particular era of music videos. Time lapses, cut aways to the artist singing in a different location, traffic marching and point of view shots within crowds of people. All of these features tend to match with the theme and genre of the song, which is very blues-y feeling and calming. In other circumstances, the scenes also are the complete opposite, with the busy crowds within the city and manic scenes.
Time lapses are often seen during the instrumental parts, as it's completely contradicting the part of the song; calm and relaxing to hear, manic to look at. The whole video is a metaphor. "Finding your way out of the wild, wild wood" could be another way of saying "Finding your way out of the crowds", so in this sense, the people are the woods.
In terms of a narrative, there isn't really one at all. This video is just a collection of clips that tell the story of a particular lyric line, rather than from beginning to end. I quite like it, because it makes the video fun and quirky, rather than the stereo-typical love story we normally see in videos these days. As well as the time lapses, there are also image distortions throughout which coincide with the time lapses and create a warped scene. This happens during the shots during the city scenes, and cities are more often than not busy places, which to some people, could be quite a scary place; often leaving their image of a city slightly distorted.
Overall, I do like this video. It's quirky and different to any I've seen before, and that's what I love about Paul Weller's music and videos. They're not copied, they're completely his own and that's what makes a good musician in this day and age. He may have been inspired by others, but his work is a class unique act.
- O
{Sources:}
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Weller#Solo_career
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jam
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Style_Council
https://vimeo.com/38030651
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