Music Video Analysis. Raury - 'Devil's Whisper'

Raury - Devil's Whisper

The music video for Devil's Whisper is a hybrid between performance and narrative. There is a relationship between the music and the visuals, in terms of beat, and a subtle link between the lyrics and the visuals. There is a fragmented narrative, this is identifyable through the constant jumps between time and space, between the story and the performance.
The video starts off as a performance, in the conventional style of music videos in the 'country' genre of music, with the artist, Raury, on a small stage in front of a small audience, in a stereotypical American bar.

The music video's exposition would suggest that the song is purely a folk song, due to the huge amount of American, country, iconography, such as the settings and costume. This goes with the song as it partly falls into the folk and blues genre. However as the video continues, we see the country iconography slowly leave the video and a more modern setting and costume choice is implemented. The video begins at an open mic night, then leads to a field, then to a dinner party, and the video seems to become more and more unsettling, to both the audience, and the characters. The protagonist, Raury, notices something is wrong when he falls into the dark setting where unexplainable things are happening, such as an outside baptism in a bath. As the visuals make us feel more uneasy and confused, this is portrayed through the subtle use of cinema vérité style camera techniques, the lyrics and the visuals have a link, as the lyrics say about running from the devil, Raury is literally running from a ferocious looking dog, which is representing the devil in this instance.

Possibly the most unsettling image in the entire music video is one where Raury's, once supportive, open mic crowd are seen in a point of view shot, from the stage, with lit up eyes, so much so that they look slightly demonic, again leading to connotations of evil and the devil.

There are many extreme close ups in the music video, which could have been included by the director  to interpolate the audience, making the video more intimate, rather than us constantly spectating from a distance. Also, there is a lot of use of lens flare within this music video, we see it near the beginning of the music video when Raury first sees the female. The lens flare could be used as a blocking device, when used, to create a sense of ambiguity, similarly to how blocking devices are used in film. However as apposed to conventional blocking devices, the lens flare is more aesthetically pleasing to an audience, but is still creating some sense of mystery and ambiguity. The lens flare which is used in the exposition, over the girl, looks like one from ambient lighting, which would connote beauty and purity through how natural the light looks. On the other hand, the subtle, but constant, lens flare seen when Raury is rapping, looks like it is from more artificial lighting, such as stage lights. This would connote the distress of the situation and how unnatural the situation is. This is reinforced by what has happened previously in the music video.

The end of the video sees Raury laying on the roof of a house which has no relevance to the previous scenes in the music video for Devil's Whisper. However it is not until you watch the music video to God's Whisper that you realise then ending is actually the exposition of God's Whisper. This had actually left fans confused because Devil's Whisper was released after God's Whisper, but the music videos is seen to be before, which had sparked a lot of conversation and debate about which came first.