you should read this on your phone
The music video has been a staple of popular music for over a century. From the very first recorded union of moving picture and live music in 1894, to the Beatles, to the rise of MTV, to the internet age today, the music video has managed to remain relevant. Today the music video has almost no relevance on TV, except for an occasional premiere. Music videos live almost exclusively on YouTube, and with great success. Of the top 100 most viewed videos on YouTube, all of which have view counts in the billions, only seven are not music videos. Despite the opportunities for innovation in music videos on the internet, most pop artists seem to stick to making videos that would work on MTV today, if they still ran videos. Sixteen-year-old artist Billie Eilish, however, has flipped the music video around, literally.
Eilish is a part of “Generation Z”, today’s teens who are stereotyped for their social media and cell phone addictions. Fittingly, Eilish’s video for her song “you should see me in a crown” can only be correctly viewed on a cell phone. She achieves this goal through an unconventional means: the video is vertical. Although cell phones are a popular medium for watching YouTube videos, something still feels wrong when a video on the platform is vertical. Even the site’s name implies its content’s horizontal orientation, with “Tube” of course referring to the slang term for television. Not to mention, vertical feels amateur and unprofessional, and not for no reason. Typically, the vertical videos you come across on YouTube were shot on cell phones by people with limited experience in videography (think of your grandpa holding an iPhone at arm’s length and struggling to press record). While vertical video is not an unpopular medium on other social platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat, and (the now defunct) Vine, YouTube is less accommodating, squishing vertical videos between black bars to fit them within a 16:9 aspect ratio, making them more difficult, and frankly annoying, to view. Eilish, however, rejects the judgement that vertical is amateur with her music video.
Eilish is not the only artist to release a vertical music video. Other immensely popular artists such as Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift have tried out the medium themselves. These videos, however, tend to stick to the more conventional, amateur vertical video. Minaj’s video for “Chun-Li”, as well as Swift’s “Delicate” video are both shot using the front facing camera of a cell phone. Both artists also have traditional music videos for the songs, however, which use the horizontal formant and professional equipment. The vertical videos are simply supplementary, a testament to the perceived amateur nature of the format. Eilish’s video, however, uses professional equipment and cinematography. While the professionalism of the video is seemingly less honest than the DIY videos made by Swift or Minaj, it is more effective. Eilish’s rebelliousness, which is apparent through her video’s unsettling content and format, resonates more with her young fanbase than Taylor Swift filming herself in a field. Swift’s vertical video takes few risks. Eilish’s takes all of them.
Anyone who is familiar with Billie Eilish or her music understands she is not a rule follower. It’s evident in the way she dresses, speaks, and presents herself online. It’s no wonder then that her music videos are rebellious as well. She breaks standard conventions of music videos left over from the MTV era and makes viewers uncomfortable. The discomfort of “you should see me in a crown” comes not only from the video being vertical, but also from its content. The video is composed of medium and close shots of Eilish wearing a crown as she lets spiders crawl all over her hands, face, and even out of her mouth, the entire time looking completely unphased. It’s enough to make anyone’s skin crawl, but her apathy toward the situation warns that she is not one to underestimate.
Billie understands her audience, which is to say she understands herself. She knows the technology people her age use and is too young to remember the music video before YouTube. She doesn’t work under the same set of conventions about music videos as some of her predecessors in pop music. Her video is easy to interact with. All you need to do to watch it is hold your phone upright just like viewing anything on any other app. By doing this she has remediated the music video. While the production quality is reminiscent of music videos past, the format she presents “you should see me in a crown” in is completely radical, yet obvious for the medium that most YouTube content is viewed on, which is cell phones. Not only has she remediated the music video, but she has also remediated the vertical video. This hated format of video that has existed on YouTube for as long as people like Billie’s parents have had access to smartphones is made cool for the first time, even if it still makes people uncomfortable.
It could be easy to dismiss this new kind of music video as just being trendy, but Eilish is clearly aware of the formal implications of a vertical video. For one, she likely has observed within her own generation that the majority of YouTube content is consumed on mobile devices, leading to the conclusion that she should create content that is exclusive to mobile. In addition, she anticipates every obstacle a vertical video faces on YouTube’s mobile platform. Whereas most vertical music videos, including those by Taylor Swift and Nicki Minaj, are flipped horizontally on full screen, nullifying the use of the vertical format in the first place, with no way to flip them back, “you should see me in a crown” manages to overwrite that default and zoom in vertically on full screen.
The video also hijacks our browsing habits. On the mobile app, you can minimize the video you are currently watching to the bottom corner and browse for other videos. To truly watch her “you should see me in a crown”, however, it needs to consume the whole screen, forcing the viewer to provide their undivided attention. It’s fitting thematically for the song, in which she sings about ruling and making people bow down to her. It warns those that came before her that she and other artists in her generation are bringing a revolution to the music industry.
Billie Eilish’s “you should see me in a crown” is a major departure from the traditional music video. She goes against conventions set in place by television and computer media by presenting her songs in a hated visual format. This could result in a reexamining of what the rules are for music videos, if there are any, and if they are still relevant in the digital age. “you should see me in a crown” is the perfect song for Billie to use in this remediated format. It is a warning that people her age, although stereotyped for their obsession with technology, will rule and revolutionize it.
