First Ever YouTube Re-post: Big Jet Plane

I am not a fan of YouTube. I think I would have only viewed about ten YouTube videos ever; and I spend about 8 hours a day surfing the Web.

I have a 19 year old son and I know that he and his mates spend 100s of hours trawling through stuff on YouTube; most of it related to fast cars and girls—or is that girls and fast cars? Or maybe even girls, fast cars, and girls. That seems about right.

But I just watched a video on YouTube that I felt the urge to re-post.

I am into music. Just about all music with the possible exceptions of jazz and rap. Well, let’s be honest, rap isn’t even actually music so it doesn’t count. And it seems that jazz is somewhat like the Mona Lisa—only really smart sophisticated people with years of training in the arts ‘get it’. So that means I will probably never ‘get’ jazz.

The video I watched was the video clip for Angus and Julia Stone’s “Big Jet Plane”.

 

I have been hearing this song on Nova for the last few weeks and I love the continuous bass line that never gives up all the way through the song.

When you listen to this song on the radio without ever having seen the video you do sort of wonder what all this “riding on a big jet plane” is about. Sure—someone is going somewhere; but it doesn’t all come together. And the repetition of “big jet plane” does sometime seem just a tiny bit over-the-top (or OTT as they all say these days).

And then you see the video.

This is one really good example of where the video actually seriously contributes to the music. In most cases with music videos I would rather just listen to the music and give the video a miss because watching the video actually detracts from listing to the music.

But with with “Big Jet Plane” someone has done a brilliant job of adding something to the music with the video. I suspect that whoever wrote this tune was actually thinking of a girl who was really bored with working packing shelves in a supermarket and was wishing and dreaming of going on an exciting trip somewhere in a “big jet plane”. I don’t see how this could have all come together quite so well otherwise. The music synchronises perfectly with the video. And the line “big jet plane” no longer seems overly repetitious at all.

I bet you have to watch it at least twice if you play it. And if you do play it then please give it a little volume and a bit of bass.

The link to the video is here [Use Ctrl+Click to open in a new Tab] … or at least it was when I did this post. Otherwise search YouTube for “big jet plane angus and julia stone”.

For anyone wondering about the girl featured in the video it is Australian actress Emily Barclay. She plays the bored supermarket girl perfectly—but then I supposed they did hundreds of takes to get the image and feel that they wanted.