Unplugging more than music
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“We might now know why, but baby tonight we are beautiful now..”
The soundtrack by Zedd packages a powerful tale of love, life, and loss in its soulful acoustics. The lyrics, the music, the video every aspect of “Beautiful now” unfurls an interesting and inspiring roll.
But what elements of the music video tell this tale? Is there an underlying link between the apparently unrelated scenes and lyrics? More importantly, how does that affect us as listeners into perceiving the soundtrack? Is there a pattern? Are we missing out on something that can shape our intellect towards music, life and the world around us?
The song begins with a crescendo stimulating the passage of time and events.
“I see what you are wearing, there is nothing beneath it….” The literal bareness relates to oblivion and the rawness of these characters. As the music progresses different tales develop through random scenes flashed in past, present, and future. But the music, the stories, everything seems to be in disharmony, disarray. Just like the lives of these characters in the video. And yet somehow these entangled scenes give glimpses of a coherent theme though the veiled randomness.
What is this underlying theme? Would it mean more if this link was uncovered, or would the auditory experience remain the same?
It is not until Jon sings the lines “Coz baby tonight, we’re beautiful now…” that the veiled link begins to appear. These people are going through trauma, poverty, violence, helplessness. As the chorus breaks in, their minds backtrack to the happy, joyful moments when they thought this was all to life. But now these people find themselves drowning in a pool of unprecedented despair. And they are somehow fighting the urge to concede defeat. When Jon sings “We are beautiful now…” they are finally reigniting their dampened spirits and “light up the sky and open the clouds”. Perhaps, “Beautiful now” is about finding this inner solidarity that holds you together in the face of catastrophe. But is this solidarity built from resisting the force or enduring it?
And that’s where the song really begins to make sense. As they start resisting, they gain courage, resolute to look past this torment. “This won’t be forever, so why try to fight it.”This is when they…
