Music Review // Chris Bullinger "Payin' Dues"

 

The new music video for "Payin' Dues" by Chris Bullinger has a lot of layers to it with some of their meanings being more straight forward than others.   The visuals are in this stop motion type of animation way where it feels like you take images, cut them out of a magazine and then collage them together and move them along a page slowly, frame by frame, until a video is made.  There might be an easier way to create this effect than through stop motion but that's how it appears.

The music video is also in sepia tones, which is fitting because it makes me think about the old circus times in the Dust Bowl, which specifically also make me think about the show "Carnivale".   While you can see elephants and clowns there are a lot of elements of magic within here as well.   This all works together based on the theme because the idea of paying dues in the circus must come out to cleaning up after the elephants, being a magician's assistant and those sort of jobs to where you work yourself up to be a clown.

While that idea of being in a show such as that gives you a clear cut idea of what paying dues is about, as this song goes on there is a line about a crystal ball and how he hasn't found you yet and that makes it feel like the way Chris Bullinger is paying dues is by dating all of the wrong people before finding the right one.   The scene where the two people in this music video kiss inside of a trailer is kind of nice though; it's a bit romantic.

One of my favorite parts about this music video is you can have a line like the one which refers to shooting a rocket into outer space and that can be what you see in the visuals.  So sometimes that translation is that literal, but other times you have to kind of interpret it for yourself.   As someone who is in the circus will likely tell you, some of the magic has to be understood but you must also leave some open to interpretation- leave it to the audience to decide.  Chris Bullinger has captured the perfect balance of this with this music video.