Ruel - “Younger” analysis:

The song younger is about childhood friendships and how they can drift apart so easily. At
the beginning of the video you see two friends as they are young and Ruel uses an effective
transition to show them grow up, the transition is where they are on bikes as kids, the
camera does a 180 turn and as it comes back round they are teenagers riding the bikes.

From this you see them as teenagers and they are doing things as friends until they start to
have a fight, this is the beginning of them drifting apart. This then spirals out and Ruel’s
friend tries to steal something from a local shop, the same local shop you see them in front
of when they are kids.

After this scene, the friend is pushed into a car and we see Ruel walking alone, this is the
first scene where the audience are staring to realise they may not be friends anymore.
However, the first establishing shot that confirms that for the audience is when there is a
scene where Ruel and his friend are both on a sofa but not talking to each other. This shows
how distant they are now.
After this we see Ruel talking to a girl, his friend comes over and the girl is pushing Ruel’s
friend away. Ruel obviously doesn’t agree with how his friend is reacting and grabs to pull
him off.

We then see a shot of Ruel sat with his head against the wall and his friend walking away.
This is when the audience knows they have turned into different people and they might not
be able to go back.

After this we see Ruel’s friend with some older guys and they give him some car keys, the
audience can tell he may be in with the wrong crowd. He also looks really scared as he is sat
in the driver’s seat of the car.

We then see the people he was with put their masks down and walk into a shop with
baseball bats, they are robbing the small shop we previously saw at the beginning when
they were children. After seeing some shots of him sat in the car the police show up and he
bails. As he drives away, he gets another call from Ruel and you can see how scared he is
and the regret on his face.
You then see him run from the car after leaving it and you see Ruel walking and sit on a
bench.

You then see Ruel’s friend walking and he sits next to him, at this point the audience may
think they are friends again but after a close up of Ruel’s face you see him sat alone without
his friend by his side. This could show that he would have forgiven his friend and tried to
help because of all the history but because of everything that happened their bond is too
broke his friend didn’t really feel he could go to him.

I think that colour is a big thing in this music video. This is because at the beginning it is all
sunny and light and that is when they are friends but over time as the music video goes on
and bad things happen to their friendship the colour goes darker and darker and when it
ends it is night time. This could show how their friendship used to be light and they were
connected but over time as things happened and they started to drift apart they became
toxic to each other and it ended on a dark note.