State University of New York at Oneonta

Music Video Examinations for

Wallows

Lindsey Geoghegan

MUSC 208 – Contemporary Issues in the Music Industry

Professor Jeremy Wall

30 September 2019
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The band, Wallows have released three music videos to go along with their debut album,

Nothing Happens. Viewing these videos, it is obvious to see the attention to detail as well as

attention to the themes that the song lyrics present. Many artists use their music videos as a way

to create shock value within popular culture and tend to throw away ideas that could have made a

more genuine video. I had the opposite encounter watching the videos made for Nothing

Happens.

In multiple interviews, Braeden, Cole, and Dylan have shared that the album and its

lyrics are about growing up, the loss of innocence, finding a way through the confusion. I find

Nothing Happens to be an aural representation of youth and parting from that period of life. The

videos created for the songs Are You Bored Yet?, Scrawny, and Treacherous Doctor, represent

all the ideals mentioned through each of their own artistic and visual directions. The music

video for Wallows’ most popular single, Are You Bored Yet?, features the whole band at a

karaoke night. Dylan, the lead singer, goes up to perform and the list he gets to choose from is

the very familiar track list for Nothing Happens. Dylan chooses Are You Bored Yet? and begins

to sing. As he starts out the first few lines of the song, he looks out to the crowd and realizes that

people in the audience are reciting the lyrics as he is singing them while others are drinking

glasses of milk. The video continues with Dylan being confused until the end when he realizes

he’d been daydreaming, but it actually is his turn to sing and actually goes up this time to pick

the second single off the album, Scrawny. This video has multiple cameos made by actors

Kaitlyn Dever and Noah Centineo, and the band HUNNY. Dever is an actress who has been

featured in the TV show, Last Man Standing and the movie, Booksmart. She portrays a member

of the crowd. Centineo portrays the bartender serving milk to the karaoke nightclub. He is most

popular for his role in the Netflix film, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. The two actors are
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most likely included in the video because Braeden and Dylan are actors as well and have been

cast mates with Kaitlyn Dever and Noah Centineo. Wallows and HUNNY have made it clear

that they are all friends by touring and posting YouTube videos of playing bored games together.

In a behind the scenes video, Dylan says, to him “the video is letting out what this guy wants to

say on stage, but his anxiety and nerves are completely blowing up in his face, which makes him

go through this daydream.” I took the confusion and anxiety of performing on stage as a

metaphor for life. The crowd watching is like the pressure that gets put on you to succeed by

parents and others around you. The crowd reciting came to me as the challenge for knowledge.

It’s like Dylan is wondering how everyone else got so ahead that they expertly know the ideas

Dylan is saying for the first time. Watching for the first time, the milk aspect of the video was

off-putting and weird. Now, knowing this band better, I take the drinking full glasses of milk as,

“Hey, life can be strange. You should probably just go with the flow and take it in stride!” This

video was a fantastic start to Wallows’ music videos for Nothing Happens.

Out of all the songs off Nothing Happens, Scrawny is definitely the comedic relief. This

music video for Wallows’ second single, starts with Dylan, in a boxing outfit, with the other

members, Braeden and Cole, as his cornermen. Once the chorus comes around, the rest of the

video is basically Dylan getting beat up by a professional boxer, who’s way bigger than him.

Throughout the first verse of the song as well as the video, the band is acting like it is about to be

just another serious song until the pre-chorus hits. The video suddenly matches the humor and

self-deprecation of the lyrics. The song’s words describe how “thin” Dylan is, with the hook

being, “scrawny motherf**ker with a cool hairstyle.” Realizing the lyrics, it makes sense why

Dylan is getting beat up but still tries his hardest. As much as the hook repeats, there are still

“uplifting” lines like “You don't like my clothes, but you still like my smile,” and, “I can still
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have wisdom and look like a child.” The song and video perfectly depict how growing up can be

when you are physically growing. Some males take longer than other to hit the point where the

muscles will form, and they won’t be “scrawny” anymore. Wallows is asking someone to take a

chance on them and look past superficial things like looks and take a second to notice all of the

other things about them.

When analyzing all of the music videos Wallows had released, Treacherous Doctor was

the most recently released as well the most artistic. I am lucky that the band decided to release a

video before I finished writing the paper because it is definitely the best showcase of the values

put forward on Nothing Happens. The dark lyrics like, “Are the things I think are important

simply just distractions from death?,” “Could I trust you with my thoughts or would you use

them all against me,” and “I can't help but cry on vacation. Is this the way to exit my youth?" are

paired with happy, upbeat music as well as interesting visuals. The whole video is a stop motion

felt fabric depiction of Wallows’ fears told through a visit to the therapist. We see Braeden and

Dylan sitting in a waiting room. Braeden is called in and their third member, Cole, is the

therapist. We are taken on a journey through Dylan and Braeden’s thoughts and fears where

things like gym class, drowning, rollercoasters, water slides, falling through space, and running

“the never-ending race” are illustrated to us. Although many of these fears are categorized as

juvenile, they can stick around into adulthood. Wallows feels like they should have been far past

conquering these fears because they’ve exited their youth. To try and find the reason behind this

unresolved trauma, they are asking this doctor to “replace my eyes for yours.” The video is very

literal. Going to the therapist to talk about your fears can be a distraction from death. We see

glasses “replacing” eyes. In both Braeden and Dylan’s fears, Cole is making them happen, using
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their thoughts against them. The video has a strong attention to detail, and it illustrates all of

Wallows’ lyrics perfectly.

Just like their album release, I do not think it would be fair to gauge the success of the

videos and music by the number of YouTube subscribers and views Wallows has. Expectedly,

the song with the most airplay and celebrity cameos, Are You Bored Yet?, has the most views, at

5.9 million. Lesser known and also more recent uploads like Scrawny and Treacherous Doctor,

only have 1.9 million and 47 thousand views. I believe that the only release that would have

aided Wallows’ success would be Are You Bored Yet?, because it was released before the album

dropped and the celebrity cameos. The other two videos were not released until after the album

was out of the Billboard 200.

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Works Cited

“Wallows – Are You Bored Yet? (feat. Clairo) [Official Video]” YouTube, uploaded by

Wallows, 1 February 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=wIgmyE5Juzw&ab_channel=Wallows

“Wallows – Are You Bored Yet? (feat. Clairo) [Behind The Scenes]” YouTube, uploaded by

Wallows, 28 February 2019.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OP2kcTHIdRw&t=80s&ab_channel=Wallows

“Wallows – Scrawny (Official Music Video)” YouTube, uploaded by Wallows, 22 March 2019,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgOR698RMLY&ab_channel=Wallows

“Wallows - Treacherous Doctor (Official Video)” YouTube, uploaded by Wallows,

30 September 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=qHTT-_PPM2I&ab_channel=Wallows