If you want to watch the coolest music video of all time completely unspoiled, please go here and watch it first (takes 4 minutes). But the following analysis shouldn’t conflict with your viewing experience.
The first thing you’ll notice when you go to the video page is a box that reads, “Enter the address of the home where you grew up.” When has a music video ever asked you for such a thing?
Oh, before I get ahead of myself, the video is for a new Arcade Fire song called “We Used to Wait.”
The genius of this music video is that it incorporates Google Earth images (street view and birds-eye view if available) of your actual childhood home into the video. It’s surreal.
As I watched, I was amazed by the amount of nostalgia I was feeling while I watched the video. I’ve felt some element of nostalgia while watching other music videos–some hearken back to childhood or young love, that sort of thing–but nothing that even compared to this.
Then, near the end of the video, a screen will pop up to ask you to send a postcard of advice to your childhood self. In the moment, a part of you will want to believe that your childhood self will actually receive the postcard. You may surprise yourself by your poignancy. I can’t claim that this was poignant, but I was a little surprised by what I typed:
Don’t settle. And try all the things you’d never expect yourself to do before you’re ready for them.
This is totally true for me. I always wait until I completely have my head wrapped around something before trying it. I never jump in the pool–I always slowly ascend the concrete stairs like a tentative old man.
You even have the option at the very end to send your postcard to Arcade Fire, and they may use them at some point. Pretty cool.
So what advice would you send to your childhood self? I highly suggest watching the music video before answering that question so you’ll be in the proper mood for poignancy.
It doesn’t work for me. 🙁 St. Louis is just not awesome enough for Google.
Words to my baby-self: It’s okay to ask questions. No questions are stupid.
That’s a good one.
It kind of sucks that this has to be played in Chrome only, but I agree, it’s a very cool video! I think it’s using HTML 5 to get the customization. The funniest part for me, is the Google Earth street view of my parent’s house actually has my mom standing in the yard watering the plants 🙂
That’s funny and a little creepy that your mom was in the yard–but I bet it made for amazing viewing for you.
I pretty much only use Chrome now, so the limitation didn’t affect me.