MGMT - time to pretend music video analysis

The song I am analysing is time to pretend by MGMT. The genre of this song is psychedelic rock, looking at some effects of drugs. The crazy colour embedded in the video show mainly the effects of mushroom or another drug with psychedelic effects. The title ‘Time to pretend’ signifies that you become like a child when on these drugs, pretending to be someone you are not.

“Its our choice to live fast and die young” this means the band want to try all these crazy drugs, and don’t care what anyone think The crazy colours represents the drugs having an effect, showing that they don’t about dying due to the effects.  The motif is to do live life to the full at a young age.  “We have the vision now lets have some fun” This lyric is illustrated by flying birds, colours and weird stuff happening.

Some parts of the songs have solos, showing both of the singers singing. There is a close up shot of both of them. They lip sync to parts of the lyrics, with animation in the background. The visual shows what they feel and see when on drugs.  There is a clear image of how the artists want to be portrayed. The band want to be portrayed as young careless teenagers, using drugs to show that and the effects they experience. “ Well what else can we do, get jobs in offices ad wake up to the morning noon” this line from the song shows that they don’t want to grow up. Their previous videos also portrays them as careless teenagers enjoying life with influence of drugs and sex.

The video is mainly is partly concept and performed based. The whole concept is to show what fun teenagers have on drugs and use animation to show the effects. The artists act as children hence why the song is called ‘time to pretend’. The costumes and face paintings make the video look much more weird but fun.

We can tell that this video is showing what teenagers act like on the influence of drugs. The line ‘ Its choice to live fast and die young’ meaning they don’t care about the dangers of the drugs. This gives us a sense that MGMT want to be portrayed as careless teens.