In Carrie Underwood’s hit “Just a Dream,” we can see the use of many motifs.  The main motif on which the song focuses is the color of the woman’s dress.  The underlying story within “Just a Dream” is the love of a young couple.  The young man and woman just turned 18 and are getting married this day.  The music video then goes on to show the death of the husband and his funeral.  From the video we can tell the husband died in combat. The wife receives the news of his passing, and the funeral occurs.  The lyric “this is just a dream” is seen many different times throughout the video.  She uses this quote to describe getting married and that her husband has passed away.  As the music video goes on the color of her dress changes from a white wedding dress to a black formal dress to show how she has undergone the change from being a bride to now becoming a widow.  This motif is crucially important to the meaning of Underwood’s hit song.  

The mood in the beginning of the music video is happy.  The wedding scene takes place outside where everything in the frame is white.  The bride is wearing white as she progresses down the aisle towards her husband.  She is happy along with her family and friends that have gathered on this special occasion.  The color white is normally used to represent purity, innocence, and virginity.  These representations of white give us the reason behind the tradition of the white wedding gown. A wedding is a time for celebration and this prevalently white scene showcases this aspect of the video. As time progresses though, it is no longer a celebration and the color of her dress changes to fit the change in mood.  

The second scene is the funeral.  The bride’s dress slowly turns from white to black, which symbolizes the mood shifting to a more sorrowful tone.  Time has passed and the bride has now turned become a widow.  She progresses down the same aisle she once walked down as she was getting married, but this time she is in all black walking up to her husband’s casket. This is a terribly sad moment and this is reflected in the color of her dress. The color black is usually used to represent evil, mystery, elegance, and death.  In this case the color black is used to represent death and the mourning period for the wife.  This visual motif helps set the mood in this scene because the dark color reflects how she is feeling at this point in her life. She is definitely not celebrating as she had been at her wedding and instead she has to deal with an unfortunate and unexpected event. 

The last visual in the video is of the widowed bride standing in the cemetery next to her husband’s grave. As she stands next to his grave she holds onto an American flag. This is symbolic because the viewer can obviously conclude that he died in combat and she is holding onto all she has left of him. The lighting in this scene is also prevalent because the frame is dark with the exception of where she is standing in the middle. She is, again, wearing a black gown, but there is a light on her in the middle of the cemetery. The director might have used the lighting in this way to draw attention to his protection of her from above. Even though he has passed, he is still very much present in her life as a light in her life. She may be in a dark time of her life that is characterized by her black gown, but this light serves as a means to look hopefully towards the future.  

The purpose of this motif is to show the changes of mood and colors in life and death.  The same woman walks down the same aisle twice but for two extremely different reasons.  The audience can see that what makes this difference so apparent is the change in color of her dress.  The audience can also see the change in mood go from happy to mournful.  Carrie Underwood’s iconic song “Just a Dream” has a clear underlying meaning, which tells a story much deeper than the message portrayed from initially listening to this song and watching the music video.