Work Text:
“All The Voices in Your Head That Keep Talking” : An Analysis of “Paranoid” by Palaye Royale
Written by Pyper M. Tobbe
The human race is and always has been plagued with mental health problems. The way that mental health issues have been dealt with has remained much the same due to a stigmatization of seeking help for non-visible problems. These mental health issues range in size and severity but do have one thing in common, the people who are dealing with these problems are often not willing to talk about them. It falls to artists and musicians around the world to bring up these touchy subjects and encourage people to seek the help they think they do not need. In their music video for “Paranoid”, Palaye Royale uses a repetition of single and paired colors, camera flash-like scene changes, and first person, vulgar lyrics to warn against the dangers of listening to the negative internal voices.
In their music video for “Paranoid”, Palaye Royale blames insecurities and mental illness on listening to the falsities that internal voices like to spew. The song, "Paranoid", is a new release of theirs. The music video is true to their style with a storyline that can be followed and a good portion of the video being of the band all in one location playing the song. The video follows a character played by the singer, Remington, through his day as he deals with paranoia and hallucinations brought on by voices in his head. These voices are essentially playing the part of the little devil on his shoulder, completely taking control while the angel is on vacation.
While the devil does appear as one’s deepest desire and his voice is sweet as honey, his words are oft dark and twisted much like those of this song. There are several points in the lyrics that are worthy of note. The second verse with "Every thought that's in my head, Every stupid word I said", the chorus with "All these fucking voices in my head, Tell me I'm not good enough for them", and the bridge with "I can't escape my thoughts, Are they real or dreams?" are a few. While the visual elements are pleasing to the eye and prove the point Palaye Royale are trying to make, the first time that anything pertaining to paranoia and other mental illnesses is explicitly stated or shown is in the lyrics. In the second verse, the repetition of "every'' at the start of each phrase hints at hyperfixation and an inability to let go of the past. With paranoia, a person fixates on the feeling of being watched or talked about behind their backs. This focus takes over a person's life with no discrimination over whether or not the fears are grounded in reality or not. Moving on to the cursing in the chorus which brings in a feeling of despair. When there is no foreseeable way out and all hope has been lost, the defenses in the brain are down and words that would normally bounce like a tennis ball off a brick wall, hit home and bury deep under the skin like a burr. If that poisoned place is left unchecked, the wound will fester and grow into a full-blown illness. The other part of the song that more explicitly states that the song itself is about paranoia is the bridge section, more specifically the first couple of lines. Asking the question of whether or not the thoughts and voices in their head are real brings home the truth that many mental illnesses warp the perception of reality and leave the person confused and even more vulnerable. With their defenses already weakened by the voices in their head, the voices outside voices can be rendered even more harmful.
With their defenses already weakened, it is easier to miss the yellow lighting as a warning sign. Two minutes and twenty three seconds into the video is a scene where Remington goes out behind a convenience store to throw out the trash. The street lights behind the store give off a would-be warm yellow glow. The lighting stays that same yellow color as Remington starts beating on the metal trash cans and even when the camera shifts focus to be on a black clad figure with a black umbrella open to hide their face. The yellow lighting would seem warm and inviting if the situation were different. Since it isn’t, the yellow lighting is a warning much like road signs. Yellow roadway signs are bright and unnatural enough to catch the driver's attention and keep them from potentially getting in an accident. The use of yellow lighting in this scene when most of the rest of the video is shot with clinical white light couldn’t be more obviously a warning sign. The use of eye-catching shades of yellow in the music video for a song titled "Paranoid" is much the same as the yellow sign before a bridge warning that the bridge freezes before the road. Palaye Royale are using it to give a warning to listeners about falling into the trap laid by the person that knows them best, themself. The choice of lighting color in a section of the song talking about not being able to escape “my thoughts” is as clear as a falling rocks sign in a mountain pass. Not being able to shut out those scathing voices starts to wear down a person’s spirit; when spirits are low, more bad things pour in through the cracks.
When enough bad things pour through cracks in a person’s mental defenses, their mind starts to take a serious toll and when that person had once seen the world as it is, in shades of gray, now sees the world in stark black and white coloring. The most notable scene with the black and white color combination is the Remington running through a white car tunnel with a black clad figure with a black umbrella constantly reappearing. Everytime Remington turns around, the mysterious figure is there front and center. Stark contrasts like that are used everywhere: the black and white of this paper, the good vs evil of superhero movies, light and dark, day and night, and many more. They are used over and over in all sorts of places because of the success they have in visibly posing two things as opposite. The black and white used in this music video is just as much of a warning as the yellow used at the beginning as people who see the world as “it is or it is not” are not of a rational mind. The use of these contrasting colors marks the difference between people with rational and irrational minds. People with rational minds, meaning those who aren't listening to the nagging voices in their head, see the world as it is shades of gray; And those who have irrational minds see it only as black and white. Those irrational, black-and-white minds are most susceptible to believing those voices. Mixing the black and white with the yellow makes for a strong warning of the dangers of listening and believing those negative voices.
Colors are not the only visual aspect Palaye Royale used to convey their warning. Camera flash-like flickering of the image is also used to warn listeners. These flashes happen very quickly and show a variety of images in the flash. To see these images one must slow the video down to a quarter of the original speed. When the video is slowed down over the flickering after the singer sees a black clad figure with a black umbrella, the viewer can see the yellow iris from the beginning, the figure with the umbrella, several different close ups of human eyes, a person screaming underwater, several other people screaming, and then alternating flashes of the iris from the beginning and even more people screaming. Although flickering images are not a symptom of paranoia, the flickering images demonstrate a break from reality. Instead of having a few seconds of one other image in the scene, like reminiscing, multiple images flashed, like his brain couldn't choose what bad thing to focus on. As their music is more focused on teenagers, the use of the flashing images to represent the scattered thought pattern of a teen, or even an adult, dealing with something like depression and a paranoia brought on by worrying about what other people think. The mind of that person would be flickering through all of the opinions of others and all of the different ways that something during the day could go wrong. With voices telling all of the bad things that may or may not exist make it hard to focus on one thing for too long, shortening the attention span in the long run.
Palaye Royale wants their audience, today's teenagers and young adults, to not be afraid of seeking mental health help when they need it. When there are so many different events happening in just one day, and then each day of the week, the month, the year is the same in regards to business, it is easy to push aside any issues- big or small- that have to do with mental health. The effects of steadily pushing back mental health issues may not be visible right away but it already opened up the brain to being more susceptible to further attacks both from inside of their brain and outside. And while their brain, at least to some point, is distracted by the possibility of someone watching them or stalking them, that nagging little voice spewing falsities is chipping away at their attention span, making it harder and harder to pay attention to anything else. They make sure that all of the bad things that will happen if one listens too closely to the voices in their head are stated clearly, as clear as a slippery when wet sign, to raise the chance that a listener will take what they said to heart and block out all of those harsh words.