5 Seconds of Summer present themselves as a teen pop/rock band in their music video for 5 Seconds of Summer, however they have broken the mould of entering the market as a clean cut group of young boys like one direction, instead they are a little more edgy.
The lead singer has a lip singer and there are two guitarists, one of which has tattoos, and the other has a crazy peroxide hairstyle with a black stripe in it and ripped sleeveless clothing. The video is a combination of a performance (in a sort of alley) and a compilation of multiple narratives.
The performance in the alley persists throughout the video and involves them singing/performing to the camera, playing their instruments which follows the rock music video stereotype. The narratives include different scenes of very different people (prisoners/people in a grocery shop/policemen/people in court/ teens in school) all getting undressed. I think that the message of the video is to show that although the people are all very different they are all human and all the same? I'm not sure as it is very bizarre! However this is my reading of it.
The fact that it has people getting undressed and the band look rather alternative/ edgy would indicate that they are not aiming to the young pop demographic that perhaps one direction started with, and are instead aiming for a slightly older teenage demographic who enjoy rock/pop.
In conclusion, since rock and roll has been absent from mainstream music for a while, I feel like 5 Seconds of Summer are the return of mainstream rock to the mainstream media, however it is a sugarcoated pop rock as rock and roll doesn't appeal to the mainstream audience these days and so they are an edgy pop rock group appealing to teenagers.
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