Blink 182 - I Miss You (Analysis)

Along with 'All The Small Things', this song is probably what made Blink 182 so famous and widely known. In my opinion, it is one of the most interesting music videos around, which is why it's amongst my favourites. The video features shots of the band playing, which is helpful in boosting their star status by making them recognisable to the audience. But the main factor of the video that interests me is the unusual, almost supernatural feel to it. It is based on the grounds of a scary looking mansion, which is the first shot we see when the music starts and the last when it stops. The next thing we see after this is a young, blonde woman. She is standing, and then begins to fade, taking on the composure of a ghost. This tells the audience straight away that the video is going to be based on strange, surreal things. The video is filmed in dim lighting which in some parts look black and white. This gives it the feeling of an old film, or silent movie. The clothes the band are dressed in takes this a step further. They're dressed in smart suits and the drummer is wearing braces. Also, the use of an old fashioned microphone adds to the old look of the video. The whole thing looks as though it was made in around the 50's, due to things like the shots of women dressed in clothes from that era.
During the first chorus, when they sing 'I miss you' for the first time, there is a shot of a woman walking out to a large pond on the mansion grounds, and drowning herself. This gives the audience the impression that the lyrics are about missing someone who has passed away. Just after this, whilst the words 'don't waste your time on me, you're already the voice inside my head' are being sung, we see the young woman who drowned herself, looking and acting like a ghost, implying that she could be haunting her lover, but that she doesn't need to because he won't forget about her just because shes dead.
Thrown into the equation are a couple of seemingly irrelevant subjects, such as a pair of women french kissing, spiders, a different woman crawling through the bushes in the garden, a Siamese cat, close ups of a random womans face, an Asian woman looking at numerous reflections of herself in a mirror and a crow.
These things all have an almost hallucinogenic or dream-like feeling to them. None of it is anything you would see from day to day - more like the kind of strange things you could expect to see in a Stephen King film.
Overall I think the video is successful as it isn't necessarily written in stone what the lyrics mean, and so people can interpret it in any way they like. Different people can get a different meaning from it, and we all see it in a slightly different light.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1tAYmMjLdY&ob=av2e