There are so many different types of music videos out there. My favorites are the very extra and drawn-out ones that tell a story with the song and add to its meaning. That’s why I will be analyzing Celine Dion’s “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now.”
“It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” was the leadoff song on possibly her most successful album and in my opinion, it is her most iconic music video, and one of the most iconic music videos of all time. The video and song are quite long-roughly 6 minutes in length. It starts with a 50 second instrumental introduction. In these 50 seconds, although she hasn’t started singing, we get set up with the overall feel of the video. The music, camera work, etc. come together to give us the feel of what is going on. Musically, we hear both haunting and passionate music as the melody comes in fragments. We already get the sense that something bad is about to happen from that. Not only from the music but from the lightning storm outside. Not to mention the shifting camera work, the scary dark, gothic mansion, the paintings, statues, old knick-knacks, candles and moonlight. And of course, something bad does happen. The person who Celine is singing about in the video dies in a motorcycle accident after a tree falls in his path and catches fire. So, lots of drama. This music video is way over- the-top. It was actually one of the most expensive ones to make. The man who wrote the song, Jim Steinman, is also a man driven to extremes.
“At restaurants, he routinely orders a half-dozen appetizers and a comparable number of entrees and desserts. He creates pop songs that are bigger than everything else on the radio — longer, louder, lusher, with exquisitely layered background vocals, crashing cymbals and emphatic titles…”
Now you can see that why the video is so excessive and extravagant. Check out this pic of Steinman:
The sound in this long instrumental opening is very well planned out. For instance, the motorcycle crashes and the music plays along with it with a sudden strike, along with crashing thunder sound effects. And visually, the sights play along with it too with the explosion of light and fire. The camera is constantly shifting scenes and points of view too which gives us a sense of chaos.
In the rest video, Celine Dion’s character frantically runs alone in the scary mansion while the wind is blowing crazily inside from the open windows. She’s haunted by her dead lover’s ghost image, which she sees in mirrors and picture frames replaying their lives together. It ends with her holding a photo of them, followed by a shot of the storm being over and the sky clearing up, leaving us with a feeling of release.
Even Celine’s live performances of this song are quite a scene.
As you can see, “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” is very melodramatic and gets us all feeling some type of way. And I think the commenters agree:
Taylor Harris says “Gosh. I used to belt the hell out of this song when my parents went to work all summer. I sang as if I was longing for love and needed it back. I was 13 and never had a boyfriend…but when I sang this song I sang it as if I had lost one.” Another commenter saying “throwback to when music videos had ACTUAL storylines.” Another person agrees saying “I got chills listening to it and watching the storyline in the video.”
I think these comments show exactly what this music video is going for. It is trying to evoke emotional responses and it does a good job with this in its dramatic, overindulgent fashion. People are reacting to the sounds and images exactly how the director and Celine wanted them too. It’s interesting how much effect a music video can have on a song. A good video can enhance and give deeper meaning to a song through its visual cues, while a bad video can completely ruin a song. Music videos are amazing because we can get another insight into what the artist had in mind with their song. It create this multi-sensory experience. It adds in a new element of feeling. In a lot of ways, it is the song visualized.
