Chart Mondays: Alan Walker - Faded

April 11, 2016 Critic Jonni 0 Comments



Mike Posner is still at number one with "I Took A Pill In Ibiza" and after worrying I will have a repeat of last week and not have a single music video to review, I find Alan Walker's Faded, hiding in at number seven on the UK chart. This song has had great chart progression, although I reckon it may have hit it's peak this week. Derelict, deserted, abandoned and lost, this guy in this Alan Walker video is walking around in this disaster area searching for something that has faded.

Alan Walker is from Norway, but is English as well as Norwegian. He is a EDM producer and has had a worldwide hit with this song. This song is a remastered version of the original "Fade". He was spotted on YouTube, where "Fade", "Spectre" and "Force" were released under NoCopyrightSounds, before Sony Music Sweden signed him up and released this new version, which features uncredited vocals by Iselin Solheim, who is just starting her career. This song was written by Alan Walker, Jesper Borgen, Anders Froen, Gunnar Greve Pettersen.

The music video was directed by Rikkard Häggbom and Tobias Häggbom and was filmed in Estonia amongst some well known derelict buildings.

It is a scene of beauty, something that has been damaged and lost to the world, so empty that you can literally feel and see that life once lived here, but no more.

A guy stands alone, searching for something lost, something faded. The actor in this video is Shahab Salehi.

At the end, he finds the building in the photo he has in his hand, which he then drops to the floor, and slowly removes his mask. Is he upset that the building isn't still the same? Or is he giving up his life as his purpose has been served. We can presume he kept the mask up to keep himself from consuming the possible poisonous air whilst roaming, but now he's found that building, and it's faded.

Overall, deep and meaningful, with stunning shots of derelict buildings lost because of the world we live in. Definitely eerie and quite lonely, the video stands perfectly alone, faded in it's own concept and yet fails to keep us engaged entirely.
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