This week, I’m going to talk about lyric videos, which isn’t something people generally think about.

Lyric videos, unlike music videos, tend to be overlooked as filler content because their main function is to feature, lyrics. This thought, accompanied with limited software support, underlaid the production of lyric videos a decade ago.  I remember the days when I would simply type into YouTube the name of the song I wanted to hear but didn’t know the full lyrics to, then pulled up videos like the following (published Feb 2009) that was fan-made (aka. not released by the music artists themselves).

Though more than a decade has passed, the quality of lyric videos does not reflect that change. They are now a little more sophisticated and embraced by music artists than before , but are in the end, still rather basic. I think this is due to the imbalance between market demand for high-end lyric videos and the financial sustainability of generating such videos – they require a lot of work! Here, I’ve found some examples to illustrate what I mean by “still rather basic“.

Let me take you back to 2012, when more and more music artists began to release their own lyric videos, instead of  relying on fan-made productions. This seems to suggest  some market demand for lyric videos.

These two videos are visually more dynamic than
the very first kinds made by fans - the second one by
One Direction being better but the first one by Train being
the kind that populated YouTube then. Still, they are very
limited in showing the nature of the music/ song -
e.g. if it is upbeat or sentimental. As seen,
lyric videos then focus primarily on lyrics and
are not made to be visually consumed as music videos are.
This implies insufficient market demand and funding
to produce high-end motion graphics for them.

2 years later… it’s 2014, have things gotten any better?

Yes, but also not really.

Why yes? The two lyric videos I've chosen took the
melody and rhythm of the song into consideration.
Words scale up or are emphasized with a change in color
when the chorus of the song is reached. Some attempts
have also been made to align the movement of lyrics
to the meaning of words.

For example, in Demi Lovato's lyric video,
when she sang "but even if the stars and moon collide"
(0:36), the word "stars" and the word "moon" enter the frame
from separate sides and crash into one another to reveal
the word "collide". In Maroon 5's lyric video, when
the band sang "but I wonder where were you?" (0:40), 
the visuals swirl into a circle, mirroring the state of
doubt and confusion present in the line of this song.


Why not really? Again, these videos seem to be just
moving words on a screen that fade in and out
according to what the artist(s) sings/sing.

We enter into 2017 and beyond… what do we see?

For Ed Sheeran's lyric video released in 2017,
we could clearly tell that attention was paid to determining
how graphic or shapes could work to enhance or reflect
actual song lyrics. For instance, before Ed sang
"and I rolled down" (0:26), the black solid layer that
was parallel to the ground "anticipated" those lyrics
and angled downwards, so at 0:26, a figure could roll down
the now-angled black solid. Furthermore,
unlike the lyric videos that feature only lyrics
some years ago, this one actually features subjects
and architecture mentioned (e.g. 1:02 a car drives by
when Ed sang "down those country lanes", 2:39 the sun
motions downwards behind a castle when Ed sang
"over the castle on the hill"). 

However, Ed's dynamic lyric video is not representative of
 the majority of lyric videos on YouTube. Mostly,
lyric videos now stand somewhere in between 
the one by Ed and this other one by Coldplay
that was released in 2019 (which takes us a little back
to 2009 with Beyonce's Halo, doesn't it?)

Ultimately, I see many opportunities here that budding animators could take advantage of. As it clearly isn’t a field lucrative enough for high-end motion graphic artists to dabble into, it possesses the elements for new animators to have the creative freedom to interpret music and translate them into visuals. The following 1 minute video is a motion graphic piece made by four college students for an assignment and for me, this video encapsulates the “vibe” of the song well and tells a story much better than official lyric videos released on YouTube. This also illustrates my point in how new animators can try their hand at lyric videos, which could raise their portfolio up a notch!

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Sources: YouTube videos and my brain