Media Analysis of DPR IAN – Nerve

The most interesting thing about this song is where it comes from. It is one of eight music tracks from Ian’s album ‘MITO’ which is an acronym for mood swings in this order. The song is a catchy one that has ear worm like beats and tells the video has many clips that seems to no go together, but their aesthetics eventually bring it all in.

Ian has bipolar disorder and as said by him himself, it has changed his way of viewing many things in life. The way he acts in the music video shows how he acted when he was going thorough a painful heartbreak. In the music video, he uses many clips of sometimes the same things, and then sometimes of things that seem out of place. The song lyrics use a lot of repetition, putting an emphasis on them. The repetition and combining of many different videos without any real transitions is what stands out the most. He is trying to convey how much pain he was in this relationship that is no longer by using the videos and lyrics to show the messiness of his thinking.

As said before, a lot of repetition was used. in the music video and the lyrics. One repetition that is very noticeable when you first watch the music video is Ian smoking. It is shown twice in the beginning, and the scattered all over at the video goes on. Ian also repeats a lot of the same lines so many times which could add to the ear worm factor of the song. he repeats the line, “I’m doing fine” more than ten times. The only line he repeats even more is “I’m getting a little nervous, I’m getting getting to the surface.”, which is repeated 13 times through the song. One thing that does not seem to fit int he entire video however, is that suddenly in the middle, a few videos with obvious lesser quality than the rest. At the end of the sing as well, Ian begins to sing in third person after singing in first the entire song.

The breakup Ian went through is obviously a bad one, one that he could not handle. His repetition of lyrics like “I’m fine” feel like he is trying to convince himself rather then the viewers or his ex lover, showing the angst he is feeling. He also shows this with the many video clips of him smoking showing that he did it many times. He also showed many clips of him drinking, wandering around, and even holding an eye, and even low quality ones which can be memories of him with his ex lover. He is not himself and his “getting to the surface” lyric means he is being aware of the sad thought that his relationship that once was is no more. The eye can be him detaching himself (or at least trying to) from his lover and the relationship as a whole, and he is suffering to do so. This is what is making him feel nervous and getting his nerves high.

Ian does not know how to handle himself or his emotions, so he tries to numb himself leading the the nerves that mirror the song title. His ex must have been someone his truly cared about for him to be this messed up over them. The video is the representation of him spiraling out of control trying to forget but no matter how much he tries, he can’t, leading to his nerves getting the best of him until finally detaching himself or becoming someone completely different than before.