Musical Times

Read about Deadmau5 and his latest hit “The Veldt”!

Inside look on Ed Sheeran’s song “The A Team”

April 2013

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Deadmau5’s VeldtMichael Turner

“The Veldt” is an amazing electro house song written by Deadmau5, also known as Joel Zimmerman, which tells the classic story of “The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury and subtly parallels some of the previously unmentioned history of the artist Deadmau5 himself. This song was written for entertainment originally, but when Deadmau5 created this piece it also reflected his life which he rarely mentions. It is unusual to hear references to his past not only because Joel Zimmerman keeps to himself, but most of his songs don’t have any lyrics at all. He also doesn’t usu-ally prefer collaborating with other artists to create his music since he is withdrawn from other celebrities and artists, making this an even more out of character song because he did work with Chris James who wrote the lyrics. Deadmau5 had no inten-tion for others to understand his song be-cause he first wrote it as solely techno with no vocals, however, when the artist Chris James came into the picture with the lyrics Deadmau5 loved it and thought it sounded great. Listening to the lyrics alone makes this very difficult to understand, but if any prior knowledge is known before listen-ing it makes so much sense. The video and lyrics are directly correlated to the original story of “The Veldt,” but connections can be made to Deadmau5’s past as well. He

does this by using symbolic references to Deadmau5’s life and the story so there are actually two stories going on at the same time. With this as the primary focus, it can be seen how these symbols tie into Joel’s life and what the end result of the story is. Much of the original story is made right along with the music video, which starts out with two kids opening a door to a grassy plain blowing in the wind creat-ing a very placid and soothing feel for the mode of the song, story, and the video. The children are depicted as silhouettes in the open door and throughout the entirety of the music video, the boy only has one red scarf around his neck and his sister has one red belt around her waist. This creates fore-shadowing towards the children that something dark will happen because the two colors with typically negative connotations are black and red. Later it will be found that the red the children wear symbolizes the blood spilt from their parents’ gruesome death. It may not seem like a significant connection, but since there are only a few shades of col-ors in the music video the matching colors makes the connection very valid, and it’s the only color on the kids therefore mark-ing them with the blood of their parents. After the children open the door

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and wander around in their new utopia, they start visiting the good and the bad of this new place while exploring the sites and discovering animals of all kinds. The intro of the music is soft and instrumental while they walk out of the door way and it sounds like the music starts lead-ing to the body of the song. The boy immediately walks into the veldt as the sister lingers behind and looks around. It shows she is more timid in the story, and it can be seen sev-eral times when the brother makes most of the decisions and leads most of the journey. When the scenes change to serene silhouettes of ani-mals the percussion kicks in and lyr-ics enter that correlate and help you understand what is happening with the kids. They don’t explain in the video what the children are doing but in the first lines are “happy life with the machines scattered around the room, look what they made they made it for me happy technology.” The machine in this situation is the house’s virtual reality room which changes with the children’s mind-set. This virtual reality room makes the children happy and this can be shown in the video while they are exploring the grasslands and all of its assets. A connection to Deadmau5’s life can also be seen from this part of the song and video. When he was creating his first bits of music, “the

machines” were the rogue bugs that he created in his mine craft games which he seems to enjoy shown by his multiple space invader tattoos. He puts this in many of his songs because of his love for the game, but they also inspire much of his music to sound the way it does. As the beat continues it creates the mode of the video by creating an adventurous and mystical mode during the children’s exploration of the unknown land. This is the ris-ing of the action of the song as the kids are starting to get sucked into looking around and are falling in love with the land that they have made. The kids then stumble into a very ominous scene with a lion and a vulture circling. All of the animals are depicted as silhouettes, so when the lion and vulture come in it is more eerie. This also shows them as aggressive from the grimacing ex-pressions on their faces. As the lion looks up at the screen it has blood on its mouth and a carcass in front of it, which are contributing factors that hint towards a negative future for the story. This can be seen as a prominent foreshadow about the two creatures for the end of the song and video. The scene is also carried by the lyrics which state the lion’s actions of feeding, but the kids aren’t startled by the scene but are shocked and awed The children could be

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experiencing these emotions because they have come to realize that they now have the opportunity to stay at the veldt rather than dealing with outside influences, in-cluding their parents. They are so caught up in their virtual world that they can’t deal with their real life and it is another cause for the killing of their parents. The chorus carries this scene as it depicts the lions feeding, going into a mystical sound-ing beat with trippy synthesizers that cre-ate the shocked feeling of the kids. This gives the audience an impression on what the children feel and one can almost sym-pathize for the death of the parents in the end because of the kids’ remarkable expe-rience.The next verse goes along with the adven-tures of the children running. After run-ning away from the lions it comes in, and they come into another ominous scene where they run through a tunnel of ani-mal rib remains. The lyrics continue “is it real or is it a dream? Happy technology.” Creating this frantic feel while running in the video shows exactly how the kids must have felt after seeing the lions, although the mode is more upbeat for the scenes that are shown. I believe he carries the beat while the scene continues because he wants to create and sustain that “awe” aura around the story that the kids live through. They also cannot believe what they are living through because it is such an amaz-ing experience, and Deadmau5 emphasizes this multiple times by repeating it in the lyrics. The view of this scene creates this

frantic feeling from the shaky camera view helping portray a feel of excitement and of wonder too. As the kids run the song fol-lows their adventure by keeping the mode with the joyful note and chord progres-sion, and the lyrics used states their love for the land they created, never wanting to leave. Again after the scene of the kids running away, they run across the lions and vul-tures which turn out to be a very lengthy scene of the animals feeding on the car-casses. While this happens the lyrics state that they are so happy with the world that he has made, and that the kids never want to leave. The creeping feel begins to enter this part because it is almost oxymoronic in words of the verses and the scenes in the video. Vultures wallowing in the bloody remains of a zebra while happy music plays in the background. One can foresee that a negative outcome would develop from the scenes because it is the second time that the kids have run into these beasts and it has always been a very gory scene. It is almost as if the producer of this video wanted to side with the children because he created such a marvelous experience for them that even we would want to stay in the Veldt. Both the video and music mesmerize the audience with

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the events and story going along as this may resemble a Utopia that everyone has in their own mind. Only the kids are able to make it real because they have awesome technological access to it. As the song continues, the next scene follows the kids to a sunset with an over-whelming view of the veldt, creating a peaceful feel as they climb a mountain in the rays of the sun. It is hard to notice, but in the screenshot of the children just starting to scale the mountains, there is a skull at the bottom to symbolize upcoming death. The death is a reminder of the past and foreshadows the future. This scene shows the turning point for the children. It is the second time that they have seen the lions and because of that they have the decision to stay there by getting rid of their parents through the use of the lions. This can be backed up by the fact that after the scene with the skull, it flashes right to the lion looking into the camera. The climax for the video is in the upcom-ing scene after the climax of the song. This is curious but it comes together really well at the end by completing the story of Deadmau5’s life and “The Veldt”. When the kids finally make it up the mountain, the girl is standing alone at the edge. The music slows down to two layered ostinatos that create a magical feel; the sunset is also in the scene and creates a beautiful and peaceful atmosphere of complete peace and self-content. All of a sudden the boy gets a very devious look in his face and pushes his sister off and then jumps off

after her. This creates a feel for the viewer of the video of eeriness, the juxtaposition of the tranquil music with the violent and tumultuous exploits of the boy. As they fall, Deadmau5 does another breakdown and picks up the beat, establishing a sen-sation of excitement and bliss for the kids, and then resolves the issue of the brother pushing her off by having him jump off too. It is easier to believe that the boy has pushed someone off the cliff because the irrational and thoughtless decisions seen before, like walking into the veldt without any precautions. As they land on the bot-tom it shows a lion leaving the scene with the bloody trail of their parents and a pair of glasses behind. The door is also seen ajar and it has scratch marks on it showing the fight of the lion and the parents, but in the end the kids are dominant and they walk away holding hands, together in their new world. The conclusion of Veldt is very vague if you do not understand the story. The events are depicted only through the video which illustrates the story, but the lyrics

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are more of the feeling of the kids and their thoughts while the events are viewed by the audience. The song only hints of the death of the parents from the words “can you hear the screams,” showing that death is a part of the story. So from this, the words go well with the song but do not effectively in themselves describe the account in its en-tirety showing that they have to come hand in hand. The song would be much more difficult to understand without the video because you wouldn’t have known where the songs inspiration and purpose was,

with both of these things in place, however, it is made whole. It is an even better piece when you discover that the song reflects some of Joel’s past, recovering from dark-ness, but is opposite in the end result. The children enter a dark situation by killing their parents and Deadmau5 makes it out of a dark situation by ending his drug use. “The Veldt”, by Deadmau5 and Chris James, has a great story and concluding message for viewers and listeners alike, and Joel Zimmerman continues to write incredible and revolutionary songs like this today.

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The New Hit “The A Team”

Brandon De Santi

Nowadays music videos are becom-ing more and more popular, and almost every song on the radio has one. The use of written and visual text to compliment each other is a very effective way of get-ting your point across. Artists use music videos for multiple different reasons; some are just for entertainment while others show the real meaning behind the lyrics. A lot of times the artist doesn’t make it very clear about what he’s talking about in his song and leaves it up to the listener to make his own ideas up of what he thinks the artist is talking about. The song the “A Team” brings up social issues like drug addiction and prostitution. Most people who have only heard the song and have never seen the video, have no idea what the song is really about. The use of slang and a fast beat help the artist mask what is really going on. I chose this song not only because I like it, but also because I think drug addiction and prostitution are very serious and important topics. These social issues are going on all around the world, but many people would be surprised to find out just how much the United States are affected by them. Liv-ing in a bad part of town in Orlando for

a year really opened me up to a world I was not used to. Seeing prostitutes and be-ing begged for money from drug addicts became a common everyday occurrence while I lived in Orlando. Before then I had always heard about it and seen it in mov-ies but never in real life. Being surrounded by those things really changed my percep-tion of the world and how I viewed it.“The A Team” by the English singer Ed Sheeran was released in the United King-dom on June 12, 2011 and debuted at No. 3 on the UK singles chart. The song went on to become a top ten hit in Australia, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Norway, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. It didn’t make its way to the United States until the end of 2012, where it peaked at No. 16 on the Billboard Hot 100. “The A Team” was so popular that Sheeran got a Grammy nomination for song of the year, his first Grammy nomination ever. While this acoustic folk song has a very upbeat and happy sound to it, in real-ity it’s very sad and depressing, with more meaning to it than most people think. Sheeran got the idea for this song when he was only 18, while doing a gig at a home-

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less shelter. The stories of those people’s lives came as a real surprise to him and when he went home later that night, they inspired him to write a song about his ex-perience. He didn’t want to be too blunt with his lyrics so he used slang through-out his song to mask the true meaning of what he was saying. The song is about a homeless girl named Angel who is a broke drug addict. She tries to support her addiction with the little amount of money she makes selling magazines on the street, but it doesn’t even come close to being enough. At the end of the night, she feels that prostitu-tion is the only way to make any money. In the end, she ends up buying the drugs and overdosing. Without the music video that goes along with the song the viewer would never know that all that is happen-ing. This is one of those instances where the listener almost needs the visual and written texts together to grasp the true

meaning of the song. The entire music video is in black

and white, giving the feel of pain and sorrow. It starts off with a woman wiping the tears from her eyes, as she’s standing over the dead body of whom I assume is her friend. There is no music during this part of the video, only the sounds of birds

chirping in the distance. The deceased woman is a young girl that looks to be in her early twenties, lying face up with her eyes wide open. The video than jumps back in time to that same girl dressed in ripped fishnet stalking’s and short shorts with boots and a raggedy sweater, waking up on a bench in the middle of a park. She’s also wrapped in a thick blanket to shelter herself from the cold. This is when the acoustic guitar begins to play. From her clothes alone the viewer could infer that she has very little money and probably spends most of her time on the streets. Regardless of her current finan-cial situation she still looks happy and almost grateful to be alive, as she won-ders through the park without a care in the world. As this is happening the lyrics “White lips, pale face. Breathing in snow-flakes…Struggling to pay rent...” begins to play. They’re describing the pale skin of the girl do to the freezing weather that she must endure and pointing out that she is indeed broke and has very little money. The scene then changes to her wandering around the city, trying to sell magazines. The lyrics for this part of the video are “And they say / She’s in the class A Team / Stuck in her daydream / Been this way since eighteen / But lately her face seems / Slowly sinking, wasting / Crumbling like pastries.” This is Sheer-an’s way of saying that she’s addicted to the top tier of drugs (A Team) such as crack cocaine and heroine. That explains

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why she has no money or job and looks like she’s struggling to survive. When he says she’s stuck in her daydream he means that the drugs have consumed her life and that is now the only thing she cares about. That’s the motive behind her selling mag-azines, hoping that the profit will help her get her next fix. Even though she has been this way since she was eighteen, it’s final-ly catching up to her. The drugs and poor lifestyle have taken its toll on her body. Her face is slowly deteriorating; her tired and lifeless eyes are sunken in to her face, making her looked aged. She only ends up selling one magazine to a random man (Ed Sheeran) on the street. With no hope and time to waste she begins wandering around the city again in the cold at night. Now the lyrics are “And she don’t want to go outside tonight / And in a pipe she flies to the Motherland / It’s too cold outside / For angels to fly.” She’s sick of the life she is living and wants more than anything to be inside but her addiction wont allow her to do that. She is forced by her own mind to stay outside and make money. “And in a pipe she flies to the Motherland” refers to her using the drugs and finally being at peace with her-self and feeling like she’s in heaven. That’s the only time that she feels content with her life and has no worries. “It’s too cold outside for angels to fly” means that Angel who is the girl in the video, should not be living that kind of life. He’s saying that she deserves better and that its sad that she’s forced to live the way that she is living.

From there the scene turns to An-gel sitting on the sidewalk letting the time pass. Sheeran uses the lyrics “Tried to swim and stay afloat” to describe how she wasn’t always like this, and that she tried to live a normal healthy life prior to her addiction. Than he says “Dry house, wet clothes / Loose change, bank notes” to show that she has a house to stay in but is still living on the streets. She can’t go back to her house because she knows she needs to make some kind of income in order to survive. At this point in the video, she still only has loose change to show for her work. “Weary-eyed, dry throat” means that her time is running out and she knows that soon she’ll be making money the only way she knows how. “Call girl, no phone” is showing what it is that she was getting worked up about revealing to the listeners that she’s a prostitute. While those lyrics are playing the camera zooms into her face and all you can see is pain and regret as tears roll down her cheeks. The chorus of the song begins to play again and now she’s inside of a bathroom putting on dark make-up on her eyes, which makes her look even more tired and dirty. Along with the eye make-up she puts on bright lipstick and big hoop earrings, all of which signify prostitution. Part of the chorus says “And they scream / The worst things in life come free to us” meaning that she didn’t ask for her life to end up this way, or for all those bad things to happen to her, they just did. I also think that maybe that line also means that her

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addiction cost her no money at first. It was probably offered by a friend who said it was alright to take and she took it trusting them, not know-ing that in a couple years she would be where she is at. The lines “Cause were just under the upper hand / And go mad for a couple grams” is signifying that most of these people are so close to getting their life back

on track. Sheeran thinks that not just Angel, but people all over the world that are living on the streets or struggling tosurvive could make it out alright if they just had the proper help. He’s saying that if there was someone to help these people they could go back to living normal lives. Since Angel does not have that person to help her through her struggle she in a way goes mad for a couple grams by living the way she does and being in the line of work that she’s involved in. In the video Angel is standing on a dark street and is picked up by

a man driving a BMW. He drives her to a high-end hotel were they get a room together. Once they’re in the room she starts to undress the man while she’s searching through his pockets for the money. After that the scene changes to the Angel lying next to the man in bed as he sleeps. “Covered in white / Closed eye / And hoping for a better life” is describing that scene, because now that most of her clothes are off all you see is her in a white shirt. She looks at the man lying next to her and then turns the other way and begins crying. You can tell that she’s ashamed of what she’s done and the only way to get rid of that pain is to try and turn her life around or go back to using drugs. You can tell that she’s chosen drugs because the next scene is her trading her money that she earned that night for a small bag of white pills. She takes them into her her apartment, which doesn’t look like it’s in a very good location or that it costs very much to live there. All the walls are bare and painted white. Her sink is also white and only has a few candles on it. Her bed is just a mattress with a sheet draped over it lying on the bare carpet, which doesn’t look to be in the best shape. She lights the candles and takes a couple of the white pills and plac-es them in a glass pipe. She starts

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smoking from the pipe and looks re-lieved as she finally gets the fix she’s been waiting for. Than she slowly lays down in bed and passes away as the song ends with the lyrics “It’s too cold outside / For angels to fly / angels to fly / to fly, fly / For angels to fly, to fly, to fly / Or angels to die.”

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Addictions Assistance is available through this hotline 888-420-6969

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