I've always felt that the British band Keane is underrated as a fun band just to watch. I don't know why, but put them side by side with their old buddies Coldplay (Keane composer/pianst Tim Rice-Oxley was once invited to be a member of Coldplay in the band's early days but declined), and you'll see - they just kind of look more interesting.
Even though everyone agrees we just want to sit and marvel at how Tom Chaplin looks like a British accent in face form, Keane haven't really made a lot of videos that feature them performing. Sure, there's the one where the camera is on a mini roller coaster, but they're big on concept, narrative, and CGI black metallic lady double amputees.
So today, we're watching a Keane video so simple that it's sort of bold, 2004's "Everybody's Changing" (International Version), directed by Matt Kirkby.
Just a side note: There are two official videos and one unreleased video for "Everybody's Changing". The other official video is a performance video, and the unreleased version is a 7-minute concept video directed by Mark Pellington that has found its way onto the internet.
The song "Everybody's Changing" is about people ... changing. The song makes this pretty clear. This video for "Everybody's Changing" features the band playing in front of a white screen, and then all of the sudden, people change - into other people. Bam. Keane members change into people such as: a Lakers basketball player, an eskimo, a girl scout, and what looks like a geisha. Obviously, subtlety was not high on the list of priorities, but the great thing is because of the aforementioned fact that Keane is fun to watch, this video really works. Keane doesn't need to be doing anything special to be fun to watch either. Nobody needs to wear a hat with sparklers or anything, they just need to hang out and do their thing.
Did we mention that one of their videos has a camera on a roller coaster and it goes through Tim Rice-Oxley's legs?
Here's a fun quote from Tim Rice-Oxley about the video and the fact that the girl scout (brownie) was actually an awesome drummer (from an interview by NME, by way of this great Keane fansite).
That was an idea that a guy called Matt Kirkby (the director) came up with. We didn't want to say, 'Look! Everyone is CHANGING! DO YOU SEE?' But we wanted to get across this idea of people actually changing without you noticing. We had a Brownie who was absolutely amazing as a drummer, so we're thinking of replacing Richard with her on a full-time basis.
