Storytelling in music videos: Childish Gambino changed the game with ‘This Is America’

Storytelling is undoubtedly one of the most important features of a music video in the modern age. During Childish Gambino’s “This Is America”, we are shown a multitude of metaphors for violence in the United States due to issues such as racism and gun violence. Having accumulated over 330 million YouTube views to date, the provocative imagery used within the content clearly exemplifies imagery relating to the theme of violence. Speaking specifically about the issues of being black in America, Donald Glover (Childish Gambino) uses the music video as a form of storytelling in order to highlight the struggles he, and millions of others, have faced over the past few decades. In this article, we’re going to discuss how to create a music video, the importance of storytelling, and some tactics for creating high performing content on YouTube.

Throughout the music video, Childish Gambino is accompanied by a group of happy kids performing a dance routine whilst extremely violent acts are happening all around them. This is clearly symbolic of the dancers being used to distract the audience – just like black art is often used to distract people from the problems that people are genuinely facing within the United States of America. Also, a choir is singing during the music video – and proceed to be shot by Childish Gambino. Reminiscent of the Charleston Massacre in South Carolina, the scene represents how quickly lives can be taken and how black people remain persecuted within their own country. As the audience is concentrated on Childish Gambino’s performance in the video, it becomes impossible for viewers to escape the violence. We are exposed to it, and it therefore becomes shocking and overwhelming. Childish Gambino essentially uses storytelling to highlight the problems that black people are facing within a digital format.

By storytelling through a topic relevant towards today’s society, it can certainly be possible to go viral on the back of one music video – similar to the scenario of “This Is America’”. For example, a producer could easily collaborate with a vocalist to create a song about the #MeToo movement, or Donald Trump’s actions as a President. So many people try to “go viral” with their new song – yet the true secret to going viral is contextual storytelling in a way that your audience can connect with. In order to get millions of views, you first have to consider what type(s) of content people would want to share. This therefore allows you to reverse engineer your production and content strategy to create tracks that have effective storytelling behind them, and thus capitalize on a trend/topic.

Once you have selected a topic for your track/music video, you should consider how you are going to tell a story on social media. Whether it’s within 15 seconds through an Instagram story, or 4 minutes with a YouTube video, the content has to be effective towards the platform it’s distributed on. There is no point re-purposing landscape content from a YouTube video into an Instagram story – as the format is not native towards the platform. Instead, you have to take advantage of the platform and create an effective storyline within the constraints that you have. For example, an Instagram story around “This Is America” could be a vertical clip of violent scenes and news events, with a swipe up link directing consumers to the YouTube video. Whether you like it or not, thousands, if not millions of hours of content are being uploaded to social platforms every single day. With only a limited amount of time to attract a consumer, we need to recognize that content creators are constantly competing against each other for the attention of people scrolling through their feed.

Now that you have a good idea of how to tell a story on social media, it’s certainly worth going through some ways to improve your YouTube channel, and subsequently your viewer and subscriber base on the platform.

Firstly, the title should be reasonably short & viewable on a mobile device. As the majority of content is now viewed on a mobile device by consumers, it’s important that your content is optimized for that audience. Therefore, using a short title with keywords related to your niche will attract people to click on the link and therefore increase your view count.
The description is of immense importance when uploading a video. As the first three lines of the description are the only pieces of it that most users will actually see, they should contain important information such as social media links, download links etc. As you can see from the below image, Chill Nation included the track’s download link, as well as an option to follow the channel’s playlist on Spotify. Essentially, it’s a case of prioritizing information.

In order to increase your following on other social platforms, including a social media handle within the actual video can be a great way to draw awareness towards your other profiles. After all, if the YouTube video generates millions of views, there’s a high probability that several thousand people will follow you on all your other platforms.

Next, the tags that you use within the video are incredibly crucial in order to get views on your video. After all, this is how people will discover your content. Much like hashtag culture on Instagram, you should be aiming for tags that don’t have a lot of competition (under 500,000 search results). As your video gets more and more traction, it will rank higher in search results for multiple tags when people click on it – thus significantly increasing your view count.

It’s also worth ensuring that your thumbnail reflects the content of both your YouTube video and channel. In the example of creating a music video for a track, it should be something related such as a screenshot from the actual video. As the thumbnail is relevant to what people are saying, it makes them much more likely to click on your video.

In relation to the previous point, creating videos around trending topics is a great way to increase your YouTube count, and subsequently grow your audience. Just by going to the trending page within the site, you can view topics that people are talking about. This essentially acts as a great source of information for what lots of people are searching for – increasing the chances of more people seeing your content.

Finally, using YouTube cards can be a great way to drive traffic towards other videos you’ve posted. In a scenario in which your YouTube video gains several million views, you can direct people to other content at the end of the video in order to increase the view count on those pieces.

In the final part of this article, we’re going to discuss the promotion of a music video and how to create external traffic to make consumers interested in your YouTube video. After all, the more traffic sources you get, the more views your video receives. But in order to feel the benefit of the promotion of a music video, it’s important that your strategy is perfect in order to distribute it effectively.

Firstly, the release date is extremely important. Although many people want to release a piece of content as soon as it’s finished, that can hinder the success if the promotion is rushed. Therefore, in order to story-tell effectively, you should be looking at significant dates around a certain topic to coincide with the release of a music video. As an example, a track around independence and freedom could be released on the 4th July.
Sponsored posts are a great way of reaching your target audience with a piece of content. With the ability to target consumers by their interests, demographics and even their purchasing habits, you can create an effective Facebook advertising strategy that specifically targets people who are likely to share your content due to them having an interest in the topic.

Finally, reaching out to the press can be a great way of generating awareness of your music video. Although it’s unlikely to significantly increase your view count, it adds a lot of legitimacy to your music career by being able to say that The Wall Street Journal, Billboard etc wrote about your track. This can provide a lot of leverage for the future when pitching tracks to Spotify curators & event promoters (as an example).