Music Review // Eric Hirshberg, Aloe Blacc "For Real" [Music Video]

 

When you think about a song such as "For Real" and the message behind it being to pull yourself away from that screen addiction, watching this music video for that song just seems to make that message come through even stronger.  While music can be the collected sounds of various people, you might not really think about all of what is happening within this song while you're listening to the audio only.   This all comes to light in the music video.

From seeing each person sing to seeing the instruments played, it's those little bits that happen between the notes that you might not think about or focus on as deeply when just listening to the song, but now, in this music video they all become so apparent.   Watching this music video is to the point where such things cannot be ignored and that is important because sometimes music can be used as a background for time on a screen and thus this just promotes that idea of having your focus here, now, in this moment.

Though I realize this is typically just the way that songs are recorded, the way that everyone is positioned within this music video and people playing instruments with people behind them clapping and swaying along, it all just reminds me of something you might see in a church sermon.   There are heavy tones of this being gospel, but this is the type of message that I feel like we should all get behind not just for ourselves but for everyone who is struggling to be present in the moment.  

The idea of the song "For Real" is to not be constantly on your devices and that's something I think we should all spread.  This music video can remind us that paying attention in the moment can show us all of those little things we might otherwise miss, which is in these details that go into making this song.  Church might not be the right word for this one and perhaps we should just think of it as being more a sense of community.