Teeth - a song and music video analysis
The song is, deep down, about inner doubt and fear, and the consequences those two have in a relationship.
The duality of love and fear, their coexistence, can cause damage to interpersonal connections and can raise barriers when it comes to expression, barriers which can manifest themselves as passive and/or aggressive. The permanent discovery of who you are and who your partner is can sometimes cause confusion that, mixed with miscommunication, can create an environment where fights can ensue.
Is there a way that a stranger can be a wife? Is there a way that the late night devil can become a morning angel? Is there a way that the constant push away’s can become never let go’s? Is there a way to beat the inner doubt and fear to better a relationship? Can the confusion become stability? They don’t know. They fight and make-up, and fight and make-up again, but they still want to make it work.
The blood that ran from the fights doesn’t beat the willingness to have their beating hearts on their hands. They are confused and hurt but they aren’t dead, yet, so they’ll keep on fighting through the doubt and fear, pursuing a relationship that, deep down, they know will work.
The music video mirrors this situation.
The guys are in some sort of lab. They aren’t there by force; they aren’t handcuffed or tied up to the chairs; they aren’t fighting the doctors off. They are there voluntarily; they signed up for the experiment; and they are there as they are: no make-up, no made up hair, scruff, no major wordrobe styling either, just plain white.
The doctors are creepy. They are emotionless but, when 5SOS go under, they become characters in the hallucinations or, better saying, personifications of the feelings and situations each of the guys face and have to go through.
Luke’s doctor is in white and calm, mirroring his innocence and passiveness, in a way; Ashton’s looks like a bride or a widow, symbolising the happy/sad or the light/dark duality; Michael’s is wearing a black dress and has an empty cold stare - a metaphor for darkness and emptiness; and Calum’s is a large man who’s wearing rock fists and a visor, which reminds me of someone who’s strong as a rock but doesn’t let others look into his eyes and see into his soul.
We see each of the guys waking up in their hallucinations and struggling in all of them.
Luke wakes up in an empty and peaceful white room. He’s confused as the smoke starts filling the space. He starts feeling the walls, trying to find a way to stop the toxic gas but to no end. Then, the room turns red, a sign of danger, and we see him having difficulties breathing. He’s suffocating, but he still paces the room determined to discover a way out, not giving up. Finally, we see a door opening up to a white room and he can finally breathe again.
Ashton wakes up barefoot on the floor of a dark tunnel that has a giant fan at the end. We see him crawl and tumble through the strong wind, trying to reach the white light that is shinning from the other side of the fan. Then, we see him stand and fight the moving walls. We see his conviction in reaching the white light at the end of the tunnel no matter what. Finally, he gets there. He’s tired but undefeated, and he stands tall, absorbing the light. He’s no longer fighting the wind coming his way, as if the light has given him enough strength that not even the strongest of gusts can knock him down. We see his bumpy journey from the dark, to the yellow - optimism -, until he gets to the light - contentment.
Michael wakes up in a dark, cold and isolated place where the only thing there is is a ladder that leads up where the only light source in the room in. He looks uncertain at first but starts climbing the ladder with faith. However, as he reaches a certain step, vertigo starts catching up to him, and so does doubt. He looks tired but he keeps climbing, nevertheless, leaving all the darkness and all the cold emptiness behind.
Calum wakes up chained up to a block of cement. He tries multiple times to set himself free to no avail. Then, he spots the bass that’s standing against the back wall and tries to reach it by dragging the block of cement just enough to be able to grab it. When he reaches the bass, he sees an opportunity to break free, so he starts tenaciously smashing the block with it. The block finally gives in when the bass is completely destroyed and Calum is, at last, free. Whatever was keeping him chained up and stuck, his strength mixed with his music set him free.
At the end, we see them all in the big white room, rocking together and having fun. We see the circular frame of the fan behind Ashton, and we also see the wall of cubes behind it, which leads me to believe that that big white room is the same white room Luke walked into after the door opened, it’s the same room Calum managed to walk to the center of after he set himself free, it’s the same room Michael climbed towards, and it’s the same room which light Ashton desperately wanted to reach.
They all went through their fears: suffocation, darkness, isolation and imprisonment; and they all managed to fight them with action, perseverance, faith and strength to reach their goal – being together as a band and creating music that feeds off of each individual’s path and personality.
Relationships work the same way. Love is a drug that makes us hallucinate, in a sense. It brings out the best and the worst in us, and we have to fight through the worst to get to the best. We have to work through the inner uncertainty and fear, believing that something good will come out of the pain that our hearts will have to endure in the process of discovering ourselves at the same time we discover who our partner is.
We have to find the strength in ourselves to wear our bleeding yet beating hearts on our sleeves.
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