Man Is Sick
| "Man is Sick" | |
|---|---|
| Single by Exile Parade | |
| from the album Brothel Ballet | |
| Released | 2010 |
| Format | CD,[1] digital download[2] |
| Recorded | 2009 |
| Genre | Rock |
| Length | 3:09 |
| Label | Suburban Records |
| Writer(s) | Exile Parade |
| Producer(s) | Rob Ferrier, Exile Parade |
"Man is Sick" is a song by English rock band Exile Parade. It is the fifth track from the band's EP Brothel Ballet.
Lyrical interpretation
The song was inspired by a story told to the band by author Mick Middles about the "seedier side" of Manchester. The band revealed: "There was an old cinema and you used to get pretty strange characters going in there. Apparently you could buy all sorts of erotic things in there - even little crocodiles. So the song just became about one of the people that used to go there and all the strange things he'd get up to on a night out."[3]
Music video
The music video features the band's lead singer as a man who has gone insane. The band explained: "The song is about someone who's lost their mind so the inspiration came from The Shining and the image of Jack Torrance hammering his typewriter. So we took it from there and, instead of a typewriter, we gave our character a piano."[3] The man is a ruffled, gothic amalgamation of Slash and Daniel Day-Lewis' character in Gangs of New York.
In a radio interview, director Ryan Davies said: "The idea we came up with was that of this guy who's completely mental playing the piano until his fingers bleed and attacking random people on the street. There's a lot of blood and gore. The band wanted the video to be juxtaposed to the song, because there's no piano in the actual song."[4]
Synopsis
The video begins, crackly and old with an odd blue tint, as the man stands aimlessly in an abandoned warehouse. The video cuts to the man sat at a piano with a bloodied skull resting on top of it. The song begins as he starts to bash the keys to the beat of the song. He is then seen outside, charging towards another man, whom he shoves into an iron gate. The video cuts back to the man playing the piano, with the window above it reading "MAN IS SICK" in blood. The man's hands are now bloody and bruised from mercilessly pounding the piano keys without stopping. He carries on playing despite the injuries. The man is then seen balled up in the corner of a room, screaming and ripping his hair out. The video, changing from the blue-tinted and wrecked footage, cuts to the band playing "Man is Sick" in a white room.
The video cuts to the man crouched underneath a metallic staircase outside a warehouse. The band are then seen playing the song again, in slow motion. The man suddenly launches himself from underneath the staircase and sprints around the corner, where he sees a woman getting out of her car. He pushes her to the ground and strangles her, only to have her slam him into the car door. The man panics and runs away. Another man (one of the band's guitarists) walks through the corridor containing the piano, only to have the "sick" man jump out from a nearby cupboard and stab him.
The video then cuts to the band playing the song again, with a few seconds of emphasis on each individual member, and the colour of the footage is more vivid than before. The man is seen ripping his hair out again, and playing the piano in a different location, before a rapid montage of each event portrayed in the video plays. The song ends as the man, back in the abandoned warehouse, walks backwards in slow-motion until the video breaks down into static. The video ends with the man slowly closing the case on his piano, standing up, picking up the skull (which is still dripping with blood) and exiting the room.