Sia - Taken For Granted
Two music videos were released for this song, so I shall review both of them, although they feel pretty similar. This happened with Rihanna's single "Work", where two videos got a surprise release.The reason why there's two for this single is that the first music video was apparently shot on just a 50 bucks budget. When this single became popular and hit the UK chart at number ten, they had the money to fund a more higher budgeted music video.
Sia, full name Sia Furler, started off her career in acid-jazz band, Crisp and provided vocals for their two albums. Crisp later disbanded, and Sia moved to London, she then worked with Zero 7. In 2000 she got a recording contract with Sony Music's sub-label Dance Pool and released this as her first ever single. It's nice to look back on old songs on my Thursday Revisits. This is a complete change to who we know Sia as. "Cheap Thrills" and "Chandelier" are totally different to this song, but this is definitely just as catchy. The song heavily samples Sergei Prokofiev's "Montagues and Capulets", which not only gets repetitive but doesn't make the song any more appealing. It was written by Sia Furler and produced by Nigel Corsbie. Sia is out in the open in both these videos, no hiding behind a wig. True to herself, her voice is soulful, but with no performance vibes, both videos fall flat. The song reminds me of P!nk's early work.
This is the first video, directed by Matthew Bate on a 50 bucks budget, apparently, it is slightly more appealing and interesting than the second one. Low budget music videos rarely interest me, as they haven't got enough money to capture the audience enough. The narrative isn't played out fully because of this.
However it is a nice idea, and some scenes are exact replicas of the lyrics of the song, relating exactly. There's an intricate scene in which ghostly Sia sings to the Sia crashed on the bed. I love this idea, although it isn't played out enough. This should've been the main narrative.
This video shows that some low-budget videos attempt to include too much, which leaves the audience, not only wanting more, but deprived of visual entertainment.
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This is the second music video that was released. Directed by Fatima Robinson and edited by Angus Giorgi. This one is much more visually friendly, because of the much higher budget.
Sia is a vision of beauty, although not so keen on the style of the bedroom scene, she looks poor and lonely which is the whole intention, but compared with the other two characters it feels totally out of place.
Sia proves that even different people can feel the exact same emotions. They deal with them differently too, which she undoubtedly displays for the music video.
Unfortunately, Sia fails to manage to capture us in this performance based video. It plods along with very little excitement or even an understanding of what is unfolding. There's a little ode to the previous music video, a scene which doesn't make sense no matter which video you view.
Overall, visually more appealing, but much more tedious and bland.
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