Tom Odell - Real Love music video analysis

Tom Odell mainly uses performance in his music videos and rarely has a narrative running through the music video. The locations are often basic and cheap low budget settings. This is because Tom Odell is signed to the record label 'In The Name Of' which is an independent label with a lower budget then many mainstream companies. The genre 'Indie' which Tom Odell is often have basic settings and locations.

In this music video for 'Real Love' there are no electronic instruments, every instrument is acoustic. This supports the music video being basic and authentic and not trying to create a fake sound. It focuses more on the music itself and not just trying to promote the artist, even the piano in this music video is a standard old looking piano and not a grand piano or digital.

The room that the whole music video is filmed in is very simple and looks more like a group of people performing in somewhere like a garage then in a modern recording studio. The room has guitars placed around it and is not surrounded by speakers and loads of new microphones etc. The only really modern piece of technology that is shown in the room where this is being filmed is a microphone by Tom Odell's mouth and a couple of others around the instruments to pick up the sound and make it look like they are performing all of this live and in one take to create this music video even though the music being played on the music video is not what they were singing there and then.

The music video has low key lighting and everyone in the music video is wearing dark clothes (mainly black). This is to show that they are somewhere discreet, just performing music they enjoy and not being materialistic by performing on a big stage with costumes and bright lights shining on them. The low key lighting with just a tiny bit of light above them makes this setting feel like a garage or a basement.

The song 'Real Love' was used for the John Lewis Christmas advert. Many people around Great Britain know John Lewis not just for their shop and products but for their Christmas adverts so by having this song in this advert Tom Odell promoted his song and himself as an artist as this advert was watched by millions of people all around the UK. This cover of The Beatles' "Real Love" was the audio track to the 2014 John Lewis Christmas advert. The advert features a penguin finding love and was released on the same day as the single. Within hours of the advert being aired for the first time, the track reached to the top of the music recognition service Shazam's trending list. Within three days of release, it went straight to 21 in the UK top 40.

From looking at this music video, it will help me when I create a music video based on a Tom Odell song because I will use basic settings to suit the genre of Indie music. I will also make sure that during my music video, the actor who plays the artist who is 'performing' Tom Odells song will have performance shots within the music video. This will be off him playing the paino as Tom Odell plays the piano. I will ensure that it is not an electric/digital piano and that it is acoustic to make sure it fits the genre.




Sophie Thomas