“It Would Not Be Just visual, It Could Have Words and a Story”: Performance and Narrative in the Music Video Oeuvre of Michel Gondry

In this chapter, Daniel Klug emphasizes how film and music video director Michel Gondry’s influential and highly acclaimed work in music video crosses boundaries even within the sub-forms of the music video. First, the chapter discusses the general characteristics of music video audio-vision and its relation to film. Secondly, the chapter examines how Gondry’s performance-based videos incorporate heterogeneous narrative elements and examples of audio-visual surplus, such as morphing and multiplication. The chapter identifies stylistic trends in Gondry’s music video work, mentioning several of Gondry’s most well-known videos, including those for Daft Punk’s song “All Around the World” as well as for Kylie Minogue, The Chemical Brothers and The White Stripes. Third, in contrast to performance, it looks at Gondry’s narrative music videos offering an extended analysis of Gondry’s narrative music video for the Foo Fighters’ track “Everlong” (1997). In this analysis, the chapter examines the complex visual storytelling concerning lyrics and musical structures in the music video.