Shatter Me

This is the fourth music video analysis (the others are all found here). These essays try to use the visual medium to help encode an interpretation that the text both supports and obscures, allowing the director of the music video to provide an additional analytical lens.

I'm looking at an artist whose music I stumbled into because of the instrumental work that she's best known for. The album, Shatter Me, features the eponymous track with singer Lzzy Hale, even though most of the tracks on Lindsey Stirling's records don't have a lot of vocals. There's a soft spot in my heart for Stirling's stuff because it is the music that most galvanizes me when I'm trying to write. I'm almost afraid of listening to it for fear that its power will be broken, but whenever a track from Shatter Me comes into my playlist, I find my ability to focus is heightened. (I have a hypothesis for why this happens, but it's immaterial here.)

The Set Up

This is the music video of "Shatter Me" by Lindsey Stirling (featuring Lzzy Hale). Watch, read along with the lyrics, then we can move on. 

And, as always, some fresh from the google lyrics. 

I pirouette in the dark
I see the stars through me
Tired mechanical heart
Beats til the song disappears
Somebody shine a light
I'm frozen by the fear in me
Somebody make me feel alive
And shatter me
So cut me from the line
Dizzy, spinning endlessly
Somebody make me feel alive
And shatter me!
Shatter me!
Somebody make me feel alive
And shatter me!
If only the clockworks could speak
I wouldn't be so alone
We burn every magnet and spring
And spiral into the unknown
Somebody shine a light
I'm frozen by the fear in me
Somebody make me feel alive
And shatter me
So cut me from the line
Dizzy, spinning endlessly
Somebody make me feel alive
And shatter me!
Shatter me!
Somebody make me feel alive
And shatter me!
If I break the glass, then I'll have to fly
There's no one to catch me if I take a dive
I'm scared of changing, the days stay the same
The world is spinning but only in gray
If I break the glass, then I'll have to fly
There's no one to catch me if I take a dive
I'm scared of changing, the days stay the same
The world is spinning but only in gray
(Only)
Somebody shine a light
I'm frozen by the fear in me
Somebody make me feel alive
And shatter me
So cut me from the line
Dizzy, spinning endlessly
Somebody make me feel alive
And shatter me!
Shatter me!
Somebody make me feel alive
And shatter me!

Three Women

The beginning of the music video gives us the three locations and personages of the piece: The Mechanic, the Singer, the Violinist. It's tempting to put a Freudian analysis of them as the ego, id, and superego, but I'm going to resist that. Part of my reasoning is because that's a little too convenient, but also because I think it would only provide a partial analysis anyway. Instead, these three women (noting, of course, that the Singer and the Mechanic are the same person but in different roles and will such be considered separately) provide the yo-yo movements of the piece. 

See, I can't help but read this video as autobiographical (on some level) of Lindsey Stirling's life. In her liner notes, she mentions something about Shatter Me as being a difficult process for her--expunging all she'd done before in order to write fresh, new material, as well as the vicissitudes of fame and her own attempts to overcome internal struggles. With that as a direction, it makes sense to consider the Mechanic as the practical, pragmatic side of her that has to wrestle with the weight of the mechanical, skill-based segment of her talent. It's the side that lets everything else work--you can't have a technically proficient violinist who also pirouettes at the same time without immense technique--but it's not the creative part, the honest part.

Neither is the Singer, who gives literal voice to the feelings that the song explores. The Singer's articulation helps to solidify the creative energies into a more widely understood medium, and in that sense I appreciate the Singer's contribution. I'm utterly useless when it comes to interpreting dance. I recognize that others love it and that they find great expression through it, but I'm lost as soon as the hips start gyrating or the legs start splaying. So while the music (and Stirling's dancing) could be appreciated on any number of levels, my feeble brain needs the linguistic additions to convey that meaning. The struggle of an artist to express herself is understandable to me in words. The music itself may convey a meaning or concept, but (for me) it lacks the specificity that the words provide. And, in some ways, this fits, too. The inner capability (the Mechanic) and the inner language (the Singer) assist, empower, and activate the successful escape of the Violinist. 

Now, I picked the Violinist, but I could have selected the Dancer, for both are relying on that beyond-speech ability to communicate. And the role of the picture-perfect, on a pedestal girl--with poise, pose, and posture of a ceramic doll--is enhanced by the violin, bespeaking an ability, confidence, and classical (read: traditional) expectation. Stirling qua Stirling on the pedestal points directly to the tensions that (if I'm understanding her liner notes correctly) she felt whilst working on the project. Significantly, the Mechanic and the Singer both dwell inside of a brown-and-golden world, something that looks more realistic despite its stylized setting and conveys the labor and effort that went into the previous album's work. The result, of course, is the Violinist, perceived as perfect because of the earlier success. 

But the Violinist is unhappy being there. By the time the first minute has ended, she's already sliding free of her perceived perfection. The beginning of the chorus, with the significant dubstep bass dropping at the moment her fist impacts the glass, is a cinematic shorthand for us as viewers to know that she's trapped. Flung backward, the Violinist is defeated by the globe that surrounds her--in one sense, unable to escape the world in which she's been placed by fans, producers, and her own expectations.

The Globe

For me, the globe is a crucial contribution. Not only is she within a glass globe, but it's a snow globe. The snow provides a sense of isolation and, naturally enough, coldness. The pressure to be what fans "have come to expect" has cut her off from the outside world, leaving her alone. ("If only the clockworks could speak/I wouldn't be so alone") Importantly, she's allowed only a mirror in her room, a reflection to provide some company that is, like her prison, made of glass. 

The bridge provides the clearest purpose to having the Violinist struggling to shatter the globe. 

If I break the glass, then I'll have to fly
There's no one to catch me if I take a dive
I'm scared of changing, the days stay the same
The world is spinning but only in gray

The visuals echo this motif, with the Violinist falling through the ether with glass shards all about her. The color choice of "spinning but only in gray" retains the cold imprisonment of being within the snow globe--a cold, gray world that only has movement and purpose when it's spun or shaken. 

Once the globe is broken, the Violinist ends the video standing in the verdure of a field, inspiring mountains in the background and--most significantly--happy with what she sees and is doing. The coldness of her prison is swallowed up in the warmth of the new world, the one that she (as an artist) was striving to create.

The Music

Stirling's success comes from her melding of distinct sonic genres (classical music and electronica) and visual styles (playing the violin whilst leaping about the stage and using her ballerina training), a mixture that garnered her disdain at the beginning of her career and has turned into her trademark. But underlying the concepts at play is a passion and love for music. Stirling's music generally--and this song specifically--carry a particular verve and confidence in its experimentation.

During the second chorus, the Violinist changes her approach to escape, relying on the violin's power more than the violence's, striking against her prison with her greatest strength: The furious flurry of her songwriting. As the other sections of the music churn beneath it, the electronica bass buzzing, the thrilling licks that comprise the chorus--turning the focus from the Singer to the Violinist--provide the way out.

And it is an unexpected departure.

We're not given a chance to see how the prison breaks at this point--though it's clear that the spider-webbing cracks are worsening--and there's a potential to read the skin of the Violinist, as it start to crack, as being the locus of the real power: That which is inside the Violinist. The transition to the bridge and the Violinist falling through the air intercuts with the Singer dancing, her face in profile and silhouette. The danger and terror of venturing into another world flashes across the screen. The music drives onward. Narratively, we cycle back to the moment when the Violinist's truth bursts out of her. This is where her strength comes from--inside. As the Mechanic puts the toy robot into the gears, the symbols break down and converge: The technical is no longer holding the Violinist back, for the crushing gears are stopped by play; the Singer has expressed the impassioned desire ("shatter me"); the Violinist has poured herself out, shattering her being and transferring that through her music into her prison.

As the video ends, the emancipation of the Violinist is complete as she regards the world around her, the Singer's voice stilled, the Mechanic's contribution over. Her happiness spreads throughout, and despite the worry the Mechanic had, she is no longer concerned: She, too, is happy.

Conclusion

While I'm not a die-hard, Death-of-the-Author, Barthes-had-it-right-all-along kind of guy, I'm always leery about putting too much of a person's past into their art. Even when specifically stated, interpretation is allowed to move away from "authorial intent". But there's also a lot of power in applying the life of the artist to the art generated. It gives a certain kind of connection to the art that isn't available by focusing on the text of the art alone. I'm not asserting that my interpretation is at all what the artists (directors, costumers, set designers, and actors) were trying to say; instead, I hope this has been an enlightening approach to an interpretative process. That is, after all, the reason I write these music video essays.