Analysis of a music video: The Strokes - Last Nite

The Strokes are a garage/post-punk revival and indie rock band from New York, America. Formed in 1999, their unique brand of indie rock has garnered them critical aclaim both at home, and most notably in the UK, getting support from magazines such as NME. Since then they have released 4 albums and toured the world, playing many large festivals, most recently headlining the Reading and Leeds Festival on 26-28th August 2011.

This is an analysis of the music video released to promote the single Last Nite from their first album Is This It


The music video is a very simple performance video in which the band plays the song on a set that looks like it might be on an American chat show (Jay Leno, Conan O'Brian etc), however, rather than have the song taken from the album and dubbed over the video and the band mines the track, the song featured in the video is being performed live and would have been recorded on the set at the same time as the video. From this we can assume that the song would have been done in one take, with a multi cam shoot (like on live television shows) further adding to the late night talk show style of the video.

As the video is purely a performance video there is no relationship between the lyrics and visuals other than we can see the band performing. Even when examining the meaning of the lyrics and the story behind it, (which is about the break up of a relationship and youthful depression) there is still very little link. It could be argued that Julian Casablancas' performance in the video is indicitive of the emotion and feelings that the lyrics narrative is trying to convey. However, if you do some more research into the band, you will see that this is just how Casablancas is onstage. It his usual act and stage persona, or even, just how he is as a person, and so we are just seeing his version of the typical "nonchalant, sex, drugs, rock n' roll attitude and arrogant-tinged-swagger". This can be seen with the other members of the band, playing the song with a passion and rock n roll attitude, either moving about or standing still, looking at their instrument, their face obscured by long hair.


This along with the bands "costume" (one is to assume that this is what they normally wear and it is not a fabricated look/style created for the video) which is t-shirts, jeans, leather jackets and converse trainers (which are commonly known to represent the counter culture) all give the representation of masculine, strong and slight arrogance. All commonly associated with rock music. This is all part of genre specific iconography (one of the key parts of Goodwin's theory)