Ordinary People's Music Video

Most music videos are brimming with flashy visuals, elaborate costumes, crazy cinematography, and anything else that will make the recording artist look awesome while singing. Sometimes, however, a music video will spend its run time focusing on ordinary-looking people. The people in the music video will look they were plucked off the streets or from their jobs, and the artist running the show will look rather ordinary as well.

A variation is a video that consists of successive clips of fans miming to/singing along/playing along /air guitarring with the song, usually self shot and sent in as part of a competition to appear in their favorite bands video.

---

Examples:

Music

• The Bangles' "Walk Like An Egyptian" has members of the public attempting the classic Sand Dance in various locations.
• The Black Keys' video for "Lonely Boy" consists entirely of security guard Derrick T. Tuggle dancing and miming to the song.
• Bon Jovi loaned video cameras to a group of their fans to record a concert in their hometown. They edited the best of the footage into the video for "Bad Medicine".
• Cake:
  • "No Phone" shows people dancing to the song while listening to it through headphones.
  • "Short Skirt/Long Jacket" is clips of various people on the street listening to the song on headphones and giving their reactions.
• Colbie Caillat's "Try" features her and several women taking off their makeup over the course of the song.
• The music video for Phil Collins' "Strangers Like Me" features an interchange of clips from Tarzan and a flash of several ordinary people of different races holding hands with Phil.
• Dave Matthews Band's "Everyday" features an actor going around the streets and asking random people for a hug, which he usually gets. Seems a bit strange unless you know this is the first video the band released after September 11th when everyone was feeling pretty down and probably did need a good hug.
• Feeder's "Just A Day" and Placebo's "Running Up That Hill" are both examples of the music video made by editing together submissions from fans.
• Andy Grammer: The video for "Honey I'm Good" is a supercut of various real-life couples lip syncing to the lyrics.
• Grimes's "Oblivion" music video has Grimes lip-syncing with a boom-box at a motorcross event and an American football game. In some parts she dances with other event-goers, and there's even one funny moment where a guy asks Grimes if he can cross in front of the camera, and he waves as he runs past her.
• Michael Jackson's "Black or White" has dancers from all around the world, wearing traditional garb and performing traditional dances. The final segment features several people (which included a young Tyra Banks) of different races and gender morphing into another person.
• The music video for Elton John's "Tiny Dancer", released in 2017, shows a day in the lives of various Los Angeles residents, including Marilyn Manson.
• Lorde's "Royals" features the singer's real-life friends, with the music video following the day in the lives of four teenage boys as they stare out of a window, eat some cereal, lay on the couch, box in a living room, buzz cut hair, tread water alone in a swimming room, and wait listlessly for the train. Even the lighting is gloomy and drab. In the video's YouTube description, Lorde explains that the video pushes back against how Teen Dramas such as Skins depict teenage life as glamorous, when in her view, "half the time we aren't doing anything cooler than playing with lighters, or waiting at some shitty stop."
• Macklemore's "Thift Shop" justifies the trope since it's all about ordinary people buying downscale clothes.
• Maroon 5: In the music video for "Sugar", the band crashes the receptions for real weddings and perform their song, showing the bride's and the other attendees' shocked reactions.
• Imelda May has used this device a couple of times:
  • “Kentish Town Waltz” intersperses scenes of May on stage with views of ordinary life in (presumably) the London district of Kentish Town.
  • “Should’ve Been You” has May walking through a London street market, accumulating a crowd of ordinary women who watch her singing and occasionally sing a line themselves.
• Zigzagged in the video for "Rockstar" by Nickelback; the video features a huge montage of celebrities miming the song in various locales (including Gene Simmons, Kid Rock, Eliza Dushku, Three 6 Mafia and others), interspersed with everyday people doing the same.
• The Pet Shop Boys are well-known for their Surreal Music Videos, but a few of their videos like "Being Boring", "Se A Vida E (That's The Way Life Is)" and "Vocal", are noteworthy for featuring regular people who are just having fun in front of the camera, often shot in the style of home movies.
• PUP's video for ''Free At Last'' is based on the premise of having dozens of fan videos playing covers of the song, shot before the song was ever released (so the fans are making up their own versions based on lyrics and basic chords). The video proper than involves the band cheaply green-screening themselves into a compilation of clips from the fan covers.
• Rag'n'Bone Man's "Human" does it with an abandoned factory, ordinary people, rotation, and the Vertigo Effect.
• R.E.M.:
  • "Crush With Eyeliner" shows Japanese fans impersonating the band members and miming to the song.
  • "Imitation of Life" is set at an outdoor party, as a 20-second clip alternately played backwards and forwards and zooming in and out on different parts of the party.
• The music video for Markus Schulz's "Destiny" is the random meeting and development of a romance between two strangers.
• Soul Asylum's music video for "Can't Even Tell" featured the band and the cast of Clerks playing hockey on the roof of the Quick Stop. Randall lampshades this trope during a spoken monologue at the beginning of the music video:

"You know what the problem with music videos is? They never address the interest of the common man... alls I saw was chaotic imagery and metaphoric visuals. No hockey, no comics, nothing; just chicks and explosions."

• Bruce Springsteen:
  • "Streets of Philadelphia" features Springsteen walking through the city and crossing paths with various people.
  • "Tougher Than the Rest" has shots of real-life couples interspersed with a live performance of the song.
  • "We Take Care of Our Own" alternates shots of Springsteen singing with shots of ordinary people.
• Steam Powered Giraffe's "Malfunction" video has the band singing in their stage personas, intercut with video of fans and band members each holding up a poster of some personal obstacle or difference he or she needs to embrace.
• Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off" shows a lot of ordinary dancers from various genres putting on a great show, with Swift herself failing hilariously to keep up with them.
• In keeping with its theme, the video for Switchfoot's "We Are One Tonight" consists of a plethora of Match Cuts between regular people doing regular things (a boy coloring, a woman playing pool, a game of street baseball, etc.) and the band playing the song in a studio.
• Justin Timberlake's "Can't Stop The Feeling" shows several ordinary folks dancing at their jobs, before bringing them together at the end for a choreographed dance under an overpass.
• van Canto did this for their cover of Grave Digger's "Rebellion". There's a playful informational message at the start regarding professional actors, but much of the footage comprises fans having fun with the music.
• Julieta Venegas: "Eres Para Mí" has Venegas walking through a city and interacting with residents in various job uniforms. They all join for a synchronized dance number in the street at the end.
• We Banjo 3's "Happiness" was filmed on the streets of Galway and features the band interacting with the public.
• Pharrell Williams' "Happy" is made from a 24-hour-long super cut which filmed a lot of ordinary people, a few celebrities, people in Minion costumes (since the song features on the Despicable Me 2 soundtrack) and occasionally Williams himself singing and dancing to the song on the streets of Los Angeles.
• Zucchero: The video of the song "Overdose D'Amore" (Love Overdose) shows Zucchero singing the lyrics (which tell about his and everybody else's need of overflowing love, in every possible way) while several people from different ages and races dance. The video is themed around learning to embrace diversity, so it makes sense.

Non-Music Examples

• Miraculous Ladybug: In the episode "Frightningale", superstar Clara Nightingale is working on a videoclip for her song that celebrates Ladybug and Cat Noir. But due to the machinations of Chloé Bourgeois, she loses permission to shoot videos anywhere in France. The solution Ladybug comes up with is to have ordinary Parisian citizens doing the dance all over Paris and make a clip of those scenes.

---