Music

Ellie Goulding uses Instagram to make lyric video for "Anything Could Happen"

by Tyler Munro

Lyric videos are the new radio singles. They’re quick to make, offer a quick, audio/visual stimulant and aren’t bordered by loud mouthed DJs and hindered by subpar sound quality. Instagram is kind of the opposite of that: it’s oversaturated, overused and subpar quality is basically the point. But putting the two together is exactly what Ellie Goulding did for “Anything Could Happen.” She asked her fans to submit images that featured a word or line from the track, and after receiving 1200 of them they were stitched together to create the above video.

But she wasn’t the first to try this. Back in October, Stars had a similar idea when they asked fans to help create a crowd sourced video for “Dead Hearts.” Like the band’s official clip for the track, they wanted fans to send in images of hearts. It was certainly less effective than Goulding’s, playing off as a slideshow more than anything, but the idea was definitely there.

And then there’s the Vaccines, who combined a traditional video with images collected at festivals. Then director Poppy de Villeneuve sorted through 3,000 photos tagged #vaccinesvideo, mixed them into a narrative that follows a dude’s day at a concert. This one went a little better.