Textual Analysis of Everything's Changed - Taylor Swift & Ed Sheeran

'Everything has changed' is a mellow country/pop/indie combination from a collaboration of Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran. The concept surrounds two young children who represent their older, singing counterparts (Ed and Taylor) and follows the development of their friendship.

There is a strong connection between the lyrics, music and the visuals in the fact that the narrative closely follows the concept of friendship and getting to know someone better. For example, the boy and girl are at the beginning of their friendship, and they are both starting a new day at school - there is lots of reference to new beginnings. Following this, there is a direct link to the boy's appearance; when Taylor sings, "And all I've seen since 18 hours ago is green eyes and freckles and your smile in the back of my mind making me feel like" whereby there is a side-on mid-shot of the young boy drinking from a flask, highlighting his freckles and green eyes, followed by a shot of the young girl smiling. From this, we can assume that the girl in character is singing or thinking about the boy, so the concept of love is also active.

This kind of link is made throughout the whole video, as we come to learn more about the characters, which follows the theme of the lyrics, "I just want to know you better". We come to gather that they are both typical to their gender stereotypes; the girl is very neat, tidy and precise whereas the boy is more abstract and wild. For example, whilst decorating cookies in their class, the girl arranges a very sophisticated and neat double layered biscuit, whilst the boy is showing just piling everything and anything on his. This could have subtle references to the kind of people they are now, which they are trying to put across in the video to show their personalities. In terms of their current star images, lots of very subtle references are made, for example, when the girl is pretending to give the boy a tattoo, the boy drawing in orange in his book (one of Ed Sheeran's trademarks - ginger hair/orange in general) and when they are both doing yoga instead of running aroud like the other children. I think the idea was to set them apart from the others to show that they have always been different, and that that's not necessarily a bad thing.

There is a very slight reference made to the notion of looking, but it is more an admiration/awe rather than sexual desire - when the boy is painting the girl whilst she dances. Little occurances like this are made throughout, again when the boy is reading to the girl and she is looking up at him, and again when he plays the guitar for her.

We do not see any shots of Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift until the end of the video where it is revealed that they are actually each child's parent. This is a twist to the audience, as prior to this it is hinted that the duo are playing the young Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift, but we discover that they are actually their children, and prehaps their relationship could mirror their parents one - they could bring them together. It leaves on a real cliffhanger, as it seems like the children have such a lovely relationship that perhaps their parents would get on really well too.

Overall, I really love how the concept and narrative work so well together in this video, and the cating was perfect - the roles of the children were really convincing and it suited the song and genre perfectly.