 In music, sometimes it takes a little more than just hearing the song to see what is going on in the lyrics. Sometimes it requires a little more visual insight into the artist’s mind. This insight can be found in many ways, but the best way is music videos. By watching a music video, the viewer gets a look at what symbols and meanings the artist is trying to convey with his/her lyrics. In watching the video for “Scar Tissue”, one can see that there is a hidden sense of loneliness and hurt that follows losing someone important. The artist is trying to convey this pain through not only the lyrics of the song, but through visualizations and symbols within the music video.

 Through analyzing the music video from the song “Scar tissue” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the visual motif that seems to stand out throughout the video is the barren loneliness that the band members appear to be stuck in throughout the whole song. Two scenes in particular from 20 seconds to 50 seconds and 1 minute to 1 minute and 30 seconds. In the first of my scenes you see the band driving in a car together all cut and wrapped up in bandages. They stop and begin rummaging around in the pile of destroyed items. In the foreground, you can see all the burned-up paper and other miscellaneous destroyed items lying in ruins. The mid ground contains the band members seemingly lost and unsure of what to do. They all pick up random pieces of the debris and play with them. In the background, you can see nothing but barren wasteland for as far as the eye can see. The color scheme of the scene consists of mostly bright colors. There is bright white sand and logs along with bright green grass. The band are all either shirtless or wearing white. This draws the attention of the viewer to look at the band members.

This scene captures the true meaning of the song at this point. The band is aimlessly rummaging through a wreck, picking up random items and thrashing through the remains. This represents the artist trying to find pieces of his old life that he can still salvage as well as how hopelessly lost they are without the person mentioned in the song. They are just wandering with no purpose, covered in bandaged cuts and bruises all because of how lonely they are after losing this person. 

In a second scene, the band is shown all crammed into an old beat up convertible car. The car is shown to be driving down a long straight road in what seems to be the middle of nowhere. The foreground contains nothing but empty road while the mid ground contains the band filled car cruising down the long stretch of empty road. The background contains a vast mountain range which emphasizes the loneliness of where they are. The color scheme of this scene is a little different from the first scene. In this scene, the band and the road are basically entirely black, while the sides of the road along with the background are all bright colors. This could be an attempt to draw your attention to how alone in the middle of nowhere they truly are.

The imagery used in this scene of the music video is a more straight forward emphasis than other parts of the video. The scenery of this fragment is based entirely on showing the loneliness that surrounds the band. They are the only car on an extremely long road that is placed in the middle of nowhere in the desert. The complete lack of civilization throughout the scene captures the loss of their entire world.  Everything that they had was gone when they lost the person being sung about in the song which is represented by the destroyed piles of debris. They were left with no possessions and a bunch of hidden scars. The car in which the band is driving in could be a symbol all its own. 

As in the scene previously mentioned, the band is driving down a long empty road with a barren wasteland in the background. This scene could be a symbol for moving on from the relationship or whatever it was that caused the artist so much pain and distress. The car in which they are driving could be a symbol for their method of moving on that without they would not be able to do. From the start of the music video they are all beat up and worn out, but as the video progresses the band slowly begins to gain back what they have lost, material items as well as themselves.

The significance of my motif in this song’s video is prominent. The video constantly shows how they are the only people on this extremely long road just to prove a point. In the song the Red Hot Chili Peppers say “scar tissue that I wish you saw” this goes along with the band being all alone and wrapped up in bandages and blood. It is to show the “scar tissue” they are talking about. The song also goes on to say “with the birds ill share this lonely view”. This seems to be what the song’s music video is primarily based on. The “lonely view” that they are referring to is represented by multiple things throughout the video. For example, the setting the video takes place in is in the middle of nowhere with no other life to be seen in any direction, as well as the band being the only people on the extremely long road they’re driving on.  My motif basically captures the main meaning of the song, which is loneliness and the moving on to escape that bitter loneliness.
