Music Video Semiotic Analysis

Meghan Trainor - All About That Bass

Directed by Fatima Robertson

• This video is about being positive about your body, regardless of shape and size. For example, some of the lyrics are "Cause every inch of you is perfect, from the bottom to the top", which encourage the listeners to be more accepting of their bodies. Key visuals include Meghan Trainor herself and the other dancers, who are all different sizes and races, which represents women positively and more accurately than videos that feature only conventionally pretty, thin women.
• The video clearly connotes the pop genre, such as through the use of colour - the pastels, for example, are light and fun like the music. Also, the dance routines and lip syncing are commonly used conventions of pop music videos, as well as having other scenes being cut to in between the dancing.
• The video has a simple structure - the main performance bed is the four dancers and Meghan Trainor lip syncing and dancing. The video then cuts from this to multiple different scenes, such as the bedroom scene, or the balloon set-up. The editing is done mostly to the lyrics and the music, such as cutting to the beat, or changing scene when she sings certain lyrics, such as "no treble" at the beginning of the video. 
• There is no complex narrative, nor are there any wholly conceptual scenes - the video is more a combination of different scenes that all portray different aspects of the video; for example, the woman dressed in plastic representing the Barbie doll girls.
• The image below shows most of the different scenes in the video - almost all of them are predominantly pink, which connotes the pop genre, and also stereotypical femininity, as pink is associated with being feminine, and the song is aimed at women, or young girls.

The video also mainly features women, with only two men in the entire video - again, this may be to ensure the video appeals to and represents the target audience of young women.

• The video also has a range of shot types in order to keep the audience's attention throughout the video, and also to make the audience focus on certain things at certain points during the song. For example, the long shot of the dancers during the lyrics "But I can shake it, shake it" so the audience can see the dance move that is visually representing the lyrics.
  Another example is when the video has quick cuts between all the dancers during the lyrics "Every inch of you is perfect from the bottom to the top", as again, the video is positively representing all shapes and sizes of women (and positively representing larger men too) and by cutting to all the different dancers it is suggesting that they are all perfect, therefore suggesting that the audience is too.
• The lyrics "You know I won't be no stick figure silicone Barbie doll" are visually represented by both the woman dressed in plastic, and the actual Barbie doll that Trainor throws after frowning at it. This visualises Trainor's refusal to be pressured into making her body like that, and that she is happy with her figure as it is.
  
• This is the debut single by Meghan Trainor, and she has said that "I wrote this song because I myself struggle with this concept of self-acceptance. It was written from a real place so I'm glad that other people can relate to it." This suggests that she was influenced by the current issue of body shaming in society, and the expectations of women to be the 'perfect size zero'.