Courteeners - Are you in love with a notion? - music video analysis

The music video is in black and white, this is used quite often for indie rock music videos and often in previous courteeners videos so they are keeping a steady theme, the black and white effect could also be showing that the relationship we follow in the video is not a happy one.

The video is a typical love story, this reinforces the idea that indie music is predominantly about love and relationships, the video also makes reference to the lifestyle of indie rock musicians with various close ups of cigarettes, alcohol and drugs.

The video is essentially a visual representation of the lyrics, they match almost perfectly, the song is about a relationship that is potentially tearing someone apart and that's exactly what the video illustrates.

The music is very fast paced and again this is shown in the music video with lots of quick editing and also lots of scenes in clubs with references to drugs and various sexual scenes.

This music video focuses more on the narrative of the couple rather than the band itself compared to many other modern music videos, however they still get plenty of camera time, particularly the lead singer Liam Fray who is the main man of the band and has a fanbase of his own away from the band, so he can help sell the video and song by getting his face on camera as much as possible. He looks a lot more confident in this video compared to previous ones such as 'what took you so long?' this video was at the time when they changed their image from scruffy underground rockers to a clean cut indie band which they now go for, this makes them more visually appealing which is why they get more close up shots compared to their previous videos.

Due to this being an indie rock music video there is not much voyeuristic treatment towards the female body, less looks of lust and more looks of love, you can tell that the couple in the video stare at each other through much more than just lust and physical attraction, this is very different to mainstream chart music videos such as videos by 'Niki Minaj' or 'Jennifer Lopez'.