Lyric analysis - Miss georgiou

In this song Runaway by Ed Sheeran, there are many hidden meanings in the lyrics. These meanings are that the character/boy's father is struggling with an alcohol addiction. This can be seen from 'Daddy wakes up to a drink at night, Disappearing all night'. Showing that his dad is irresponsible and has been going through alcohol abuse for a long time, as it says 'I've known  it for a long time'. We can also infer from the lyrics that the son/character can't cope with his dad's addiction and want's to runaway from the troubles at home.  

He also wants to runaway with a love interest 'I wanna runaway, runaway with you'. Showing that his focus is on someone else, a lover. We can also find out that despite his dad's lack of emotion the son (character) still loves his father 'cold as stone... I love him from the skin to my bones ah.. I don't wanna live this way'. 

Furthermore, it is clear that the character feels that he has no choice but to runaway as he doesn't want to live that way and he doesn't really want to runaway. But he's struggling to cope when he's at home. I'm identifying the character as a male as that is what we are going to portray the character as and Ed Sheeran is a male so it will be easier to relate the character to Ed Sheeran when producing the music video. 

Our group have annotated the lyrics by printing out the lyrics and writing side notes next to lyrical lines that we feel inform the audience something, or a concept that could be shown visually or something we want to include to add more emphasis to the lyrics. For example, 'gonna grab my clothes and when it's morning, go' This shows that we should show the character running away in the morning.  So the lyrics and visuals match (Goodwin's theory).

These annotations will really be beneficial as it has helped us create more ideas for micro-elements such as, mise-en-scene putting the setting in a house, wearing very casual clothing and a cap, iconography such as a backpack and decide on lighting (day lighting, due to the character running away in the morning). 

  The style of the music will be mainly narrative and concept based due to the information and story that the lyrics tell. But the performance is something that we have decided to add to make the music video more visually entertaining and interactive with the audience. 

These annotation of lyrics helped us to understand the target audience as young people due to the closeness of the parent and child. As the father and child still live together. Therefore, the child is most likely to be of a younger age. And to call it 'running away' means that the character/child didn't have permission to leave or maybe isn't old enough to leave. Portraying to the audience that this character is of a young age. 

Lastly, there are many conventions shown in these lyrics, such as, casual clothing, props to help the story and very narrative based lyrics. The casual clothing will be displayed in the sections of the lyrics where Ed Sheeran mentions 'cause I packed my clothes'. Casual clothing is good as it allows the audience to focus more on the music rather than the artists appearance. The use of props such as a backpack and suitcase 'Backpack..put my home in a suitcase'. Which will help add emphasis and understanding to the lyrics and music video. The narrative on indie lyrics/music videos tend to be narrative based as indie artists aim to attract their fan base by producing a deep song with meaning and then representing it visually. It is clear to see that these lyrics follow a storyline.