Analyzing A Song

The Wombats: Let's Dance To Joy Division

What Does It Mean?

The song is very happy and upbeat, with obvious lyrics that are repeated like 'happy' and 'celebrate'. The main theme of the song is to celebrate the fact that although things are going badly, 'we're so happy'. My first though when I heard this song was that the context was way off for such a happy song: you could never dance to Joy Division feeling 'so happy' dispite everything being bad because the entire persona of the 70's punk band was one of mysterious darkness and depression, culminating in the suicide of the lead singer, Ian Curtis. The Wombats sing about this 'irony', but either are completely missing the point of Joy Division or are genuinely turning round the idea of the previous band to produce something that is upbeat and sellable. I do not think that the song itself is ironic, and that they are actually in tune with the depressing tone of Joy Division and the 'so happy' part is exaggerated to emphasis how they are so not. Overall, I think the Wombats are trying to take a positive inspiration from Joy Division and the irony that they sing about is the fact that they're doing this - that they're being positive. With millions of indie bands (who must listen wistfully to Joy Division amongst many others) struggling to get a break and write music, a song like this would be very appealing and captures the feeling of happy failure, or failing with style.

The Treatment for the Music Video

If I were directing this music video, I would focus mainly on the realistic, measured tone of the song: "everything is going wrong but we're so happy". This makes me think of a a relaxed, down-to-earth, matey environment like a small local bar with a stage, packed with friends laughing and having a good night. We had the idea in class to shoot the video in a point-of-view angle of one of the fans, perhaps travelling on his way to the gig and meeting up with friends as he goes. At around the last chorus of the song, we could open up to the brightly-lit stage with the band playing energetically to a happy crowd - a scene we might have previously had flashes of on the journey. Although this is a simple idea I think it expresses the views of the song well.