- Man Is Sick
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"Man is Sick" Single by Exile Parade from the album Brothel Ballet Released 2010 Format CD[1], digital download[2] Recorded 2009 Genre British rock, Hard rock, Rock and roll Length 3:09 Label Suburban Records Writer(s) Exile Parade Producer Rob Ferrier, Exile Parade "Man is Sick" is a song by British rock band Exile Parade. It is the fifth track from the band's EP Brothel Ballet.
Contents
Lyrical interpretation
The song was inspired by a story told to the band by author Mick Middles about the "seedier side" of Manchester. The band revealed, "There was an old cinema and you used to get pretty strange characters going in there. Apparently you could buy all sorts of erotic things in there - even little crocodiles. So the song just became about one of the people that used to go there and all the strange things he'd get up to on a night out."[3]
Music video
The official video for the song, directed by Ryan Davies, features the band's lead singer as a man who has gone insane ("sick"). The band explained, "The song is about someone who's lost their mind so the inspiration came from The Shining and the image of Jack Torrance hammering his typewriter. So we took it from there and, instead of a typewriter, we gave our character a piano."[3] The man appears to be a ruffled, gothic amalgamation of Slash and Daniel Day-Lewis' character in Gangs of New York.
“ The band wanted their next video to be 'twisted' and 'edgy', and the idea we came up with was that of this guy who's completely mental playing the piano until his fingers bleed and attacking random people on the street. There's a lot of blood and gore. The band wanted the video to be juxtaposed to the song, because there's no piano in the actual song. ” —Ryan Davies, radio interview[4].
Synopsis
The video begins, crackly and old with an odd blue tint, as the man stands aimlessly in an abandoned warehouse. The video cuts to the man sat at a piano with a bloodied skull resting on top of it. In slow-motion, the man cracks his knuckles. The slow-motion effect disappears as the man's hands fall down, and the song begins as he starts to bash the keys to the beat of the song. The man is then seen outside, charging towards another man, who is knocked into an iron gate by the "sick" man. The video cuts back to the man playing the piano, with the window above it reading "MAN IS SICK" in blood. The man's hands are now bloody and bruised from mercilessly pounding the piano keys without stopping. He carries on playing despite the injuries. The man is then seen balled up in the corner of a room, screaming and ripping his hair out with his hands and a pair of scissors. The video, changing from the blue-tinted and wrecked footage, cuts to Exile Parade playing "Man is Sick" in a white room.
After swapping between the band, the man playing the piano and the man ripping his hair out, the video cuts to the man crouched underneath metallic stairs. The band are then seen playing the song again, only this time in slow-motion. The man suddenly launches himself from underneath the stairs and around the corner, where he sees a woman getting out of her car. He pushes her to the ground and strangles her, only to have her push him into her car. Slamming into the door, the man panics and runs away. Another man (the band's guitarist Chris Owen) walks through the corridor containing the piano, only to have the "sick" man jump out from a nearby cupboard and stab him. Due to the location of this event, it could be said that the skull on the piano is Owen's. The video then cuts to the band playing the song again, with a few seconds of emphasis on each individual member, and the colour of the footage is more vivid than before. The man is seen ripping his hair out again, and playing the piano in a different location, before a rapid montage of each event portrayed in the video plays. The song ends as the man, back in the abandoned warehouse, walks backwards in slow-motion until the video breaks down into static. The video ends with the man slowly closing the case on his piano, standing up, picking up the skull - which is still dripping with blood - and exiting the room.
Concept
When Phil Hennessey of Exile Parade first met up with the director, Ryan Davies, to discuss the video, he used Gangs of New York as an example of how the character should look.[5] Davies took this idea to his sister, who served as the sole makeup artist for the video, and they created the image of the video's main character (she also appears in the video as the woman who is attacked by the "sick" man).[5]
References
External links
Categories:- 2010 singles
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