Lyrics, images and performance in mainstream music videos in Spanish

161CLAC 100 (2024): 161-170 Lyrics, images and performance in mainstream music videos in Spanish Virginia Guarinos Universidad de Sevilla (España) Ana Sedeño-Valdellós Universidad de Málaga (España) https://dx.doi.org/10.5209/clac.81140 Recibido: 8 de enero de 2022 • Aceptado: 22 de septiembre de 2022 EN Abstract: The relationship between lyrics and visual band in music video is a singular form of interaction in the audiovisual production. The work aims to analyze the correspondences between the images and the song, considering music and lyrics in the most recently successful music videos in Spanish. From a wide sample of starting, a total of fifteen musical themes in Spanish of various mainstream styles (pop, hip hop, reggaeton) have been selected for the final analysis and the enunciation, structure and gestures are studied both in the song and in music video for publicity. Moreover, we studied other related elements such as the visual and aesthetic world model represented in the music video´s images and the semantic fields of the song lyrics. The findings are aimed at clarifying a differentiation by musical genres in terms of the relationship between lyrics and music. Reggaeton uses very limited semantic fields, resorting to the use of repetitive sounds within the lyrics. Rock and pop seek a co-expressiveness between music and the visual, and use gestures such as the performer’s hand to build the relationship with the fan/listener... Keywords: popular music, music video, audiovisual performance, music in Spanish. ES Letras, imágenes y performance en vídeos musicales mainstream en español Resumen: La relación entre letra y banda visual en el vídeo musical es una forma singular de interacción en la producción audiovisual. El trabajo tiene como objetivo analizar las correspondencias entre las imágenes y la canción, considerando música y letra en los vídeos musicales en español de más reciente éxito. De una amplia muestra de partida, se han seleccionado un total de quince temas musicales en español de varios estilos mainstream (pop, hip hop, reggaeton) para el análisis final y se estudia enunciación, estructura y gestos, tanto en la canción como en la música. Además, estudiamos otros elementos relacionados como el modelo visual y estético del mundo representado en las imágenes del vídeo musical y los campos semánticos de las letras de las canciones. Las conclusiones se dirigen a clarificar una diferenciación por géneros musicales en cuanto a la relación letras y música. El reggaeton emplea campos semánticos muy limitados, recurriendo al uso de sonidos reiterativos dentro de la letra. El rock y el pop buscan una coexpresividad entre la música y lo visual y emplean los gestos del intérprete para construir la relación con el fan/oyente.. Palabras clave: Música popular, vídeo musical, performance audiovisual, música en español. Sumario: 1. Introduction. 2. Theoretical foundations: music, lyrics and performance. 3. Objectives, methodology and sample. 4. Results. 5. Conclusions. Referencias bibliográficas. Cómo citar: Guarinos, V.; Sedeño-Valdellós, A. (2024). Lyrics, images and performance in mainstream music videos in Spanish. Círculo de Lingüística Aplicada a la Comunicación 100 (2024) 161-170. https://dx.doi. org/10.5209/clac.81140 1. Introduction The musical phenomenon has been the backbone of some contemporary transformations since the 1950s, with the most important being the emergence of youth as a preferential target audience. The sociology of popular music (Frith, 1988; Talbot, 2000) and more musicological approaches (Tagg, 1982) uncovered an Círculo de Lingüística Aplicada a la Comunicación ISSN-e: 1576-4737 ARTÍCULOS 162 Guarinos, V.; Sedeño-Valdellós, A. CLAC 100 (2024): 161-170 industrial monetary economy in which music is just another element of the world-commodity system. This commercial approach serves as a starting point to introduce us to the different areas in which the musical phenomenon is developed. Music as a total social fact, which involves the creation of meaning, is today surrounded by a transmedia sales network. Within this network, the mainstream music video—although still a commercial advertising medium—has brought about some aesthetic changes in our culture, as shown by Auslander (2008), Chion (1993), Fiske (1987), Kaplan (1987), Korsgaard (2013) or Vernallis (2004). In this context, the music video must be considered from the perspective of textual semiosis, but also from social semiosis. Regarding the former, the music video contains iconic language which constitutes structures that establish a homogeneous discourse that can be interpreted in each case as a text attached to the song, always prior to the production of the video itself. That is, it assumes what Bettetini calls a text (Bettetini, 1986, p. 80). an organic and coherent semiotic body, a premise and guide of a communicative exchange... ... a text is also, normally, a set of statements that are updated in reciprocal relations and in a structure aimed at the construction of meaning: each statement requires a contextual environment to be inserted in the production of meaning to which it contributes. It follows that images and gestures by the performer(s) should be aimed at reinforcing the pre-existing text that is the song, which they intend to publicise, and which should be interwoven to form a coherent and compact whole, to fulfil the three classic functions of the language of the music video: emotional, phatic and poetic. The first function can be observed in those gestures by the performer that accentuate the feeling expressed in the song lyrics and is observed in the visual simulation supported by the playback and the artist’s performance. The aim is to build and communicate that very open-ended emotion to the spectator, who is a potential fan or consumer of music, and to try to sway him or her towards making a purchase. As for the poetic function, it is one of the most developed by the music video: all its formal codes of visual, sound and linguistic text are arranged with an aesthetic sense. At the performance level, videos develop the phatic function using sustained contact between the emitter and the receiver; this is done through the eye contact that the singer/ front man maintains with the camera. Furthermore, Eliseo Veron’s theory of social discourse formulates mechanisms of social semiosis, considering discourse “not only as the linguistic matter, but also every signifying set considered as such (that is to say, considered as matter invested with sense), whatever the signifying matters at stake (the language itself, the body, the image, etc.)” (Verón, 2004, p. 48). The marks of meaning of different codes become a kind of cut-out or unit of meaning in the flow of semiosis, as Mauleón (2010) also points out. In this way, the lyrics of the song in the music video are not the only element with meaning, but also the gestures are “co-expressive with the discourse and take place concurrently and synchronously with the linguistic package that expresses the same meaning, however at the moment of their synchronisation, gestures and words are not redundant, but co-expressive, because while speech conveys the meanings in an analytical and segmented way, gestures do it in a global and holistic way; that is, they are two different ways of communicating the same meaning” (Mauleón, 2008, p. 196). In the field of critical image analysis theory, W. J. T. Mitchell (2015), presents his concept of the basic triad of the new media: image/music/text, the most constant of all the taxonomies in media and arts. The contemporary music video makes this triad its own and consolidates it with one of the most versatile formal configurations, adaptable to all kinds of formulas and media objects, through logic fully inserted in the media ecosystem. For all these reasons, this text approaches the music video as a multidisciplinary text associated with—but not a compulsory part of—a song, as the videos themselves show. Simple observation could lead us to state that music videos can be very different depending on the musical genre of their songs, even if they are all consumer music. For instance, it is obvious that there are many more songs of literary quality in pop than in reggaeton. There are songs that are not banal texts of poor quality and aimed at immediate consumption, that are not secondary to music, and that can reach an aesthetic quality comparable to poetry (Gómez Capuz, 2004). The pop song is a manifestation of what García Rivera (1995) calls “socio-literary plurality”, where, in contrast to the cultured character of high literature, there is a alternative literature produced on the fringes of literature as an officially recognised institution. Alongside ancient forms of marginal literature (oral, cordel literature, melodrama, feuilleton), the author points to modern models linked to audiovisual trends (crime, adventure and science fiction novels, comics, etc.) which could also include song. The literary quality of the songs usually correlates with the aesthetic visual quality of the music video and a greater connection between lyrics, gestures and visual images. 2. Theoretical foundations: music, lyrics and performance Achieving this connection between lyrics and image is not easy, hence the limited existence of organic music videos that work as a whole. In his study, Igoa (2010) summarises the relationships between music and language from the dimensions of perception and sound production, of combinatory or sequential structure and of expression or interpretation of meanings. The video as a format for consumption and sale establishes ideas about the multiplicity of meanings generated in both by the receptor groups (Igoa, 2010, p. 100): music and language can be considered as regulated social activities, that is, as forms of collective behaviour whose participants act according to rules that regulate the coordination of the group members in a common action and assign certain roles to each participating member. There are multiple functions that these activities can develop, but they presuppose cooperation among the participants in order to achieve certain goals. 163Guarinos, V.; Sedeño-Valdellós, A. CLAC 100 (2024): 161-170 And to achieve this goal, the final product of the music video must decide which elements to enhance. In that desired balanced framework, it would appear that the song is the textual loser. In this sense, Vernallis (2002) argues that songs rarely have a superior function; instead, they go, in a subordinate role, after music and image. In her own words: “Music-video lyrics frequently make way for materials with sharper contours— an interesting timbre, a dancer’s gesture, a dramatic edit. The lyrics’ broken continuity and uncertain effects may stem from their origin. With pop songs, music is most commonly composed first and the lyrics second” (Vernallis, 2002, p. 12). Thus, lyrics can maintain a narrow or wide network with their own music and, regarding the music video, they can be related closely or distantly to the music and image (Vernallis, 2002, p. 28): music-video lyrics can take on an oracular function. They name and point, but they do not describe. Words seem to become things. They separate from and hover over the music and image. Perhaps because lyrics are backed by such strong forces (a bed of music fit to their contours), they seem capable of doing something. Perhaps it is the craft within the lines themselves, the sense of poetry or verbal play, which makes them seem more about affect than meaning. And along with what the lyrics tell, we must consider who is telling it. The subject who produces the lyrics’ message, easily confused with the performer, also has a complex position in terms of enunciative authenticity. At the beginning of the millennium, Appen and Doehring (2006), and Val et al. (2014)—in the Anglo-Saxon and in the Spanish spheres, respectively—published studies of performative authenticity and socio-semio- tics of popular music, with the aim of analysing the mechanisms that artists use at a textual level to meet the conventions and expectations related to authenticity in pop-rock. Cook (2012) talks about the song, where lyrics are well adapted to music, as a pre-existing form of multimedia: each medium tackles what the other cannot, that is, they are complementary media. Behind this problem lies the issue of the representation of music. According to Hanslick, music does not need to maintain a direct connection with the world (1957). Kivy argues that music can represent mechanical and natural sounds like trains and birds (Kivy, 1980, pp. 91-92). In any case, according to Middleton (1990), lyrics can be adapted to music in three ways: words can function as expressive objects, merging with melody and voice, generating feeling (as in ballads); they can also adopt a narrative function, ruling over the rhythmic and the harmonic (as in rap); or they can act as sounds, absorbed by the music, the voice being just another instrument, sometimes resulting in a sound game without semantic content (awopbopaloobop alopbamboom) or with incongruous content (“Rocks to the east, she rocks to the west, she’s the girl that I know best”) (Middleton, 1990, p. 231). Another element that can be analysed is the audiovisual gestures of the singer or front man. Goffman (1993) refers to gestures as rituals in human relations—and not as a superficial, almost mechanical, conventionalised act—through which an individual shows respect towards an object of great value or an object that represents it. Beyond facial gestures, the hands and their gesticulation also give meaning. Regarding the source of human language, scientists Rizzolatti and Arbib presented, in 1998, research on the link between hand movements as primitive gestures that are maintained in urban music genres, as an activity of a participant in a communicative act that serves to interact with other participants in a process that they call “performance”; a process which could be extended, in addition to the personal gestures of the singers or dancers of the specific music videos, to other gestural forms such as twerking, bridging this—sometimes small—gap between gestures and choreographic movement. This is linked to the body as a producer of understanding, a recurrent element in music videos from different perspectives: motor activity as a producer of musical sound, but also as an accompanist of musical sounds, using gestures or movements with the head and limbs as preludes or companions to musical sounds (López Cano, 2005). The importance of gestures in popular music, whether live at a concert, in recordings, or in music videos, means that they are present by anchorage or by relay (Videla, 2010), that is, illustrating information contained in the lyrics, redounding to them, or adding new information with respect to the lyrics. Furthermore, the gestures are linked to the expectations generated by the texts themselves (the very theme of the song or the genre to which its music belongs) or the situations in which they are produced (large concert spaces require bombastic gestures; the close shots of a music video require less breadth of gesture). In addition to the lyrics’ contents and the performers’ gestures, we should not forget that the music video is a discursive structure. In this sense, the song is too, so we cannot forget to check how the structure of the song is displayed. Popular songs usually contain a well-defined structure with between 3 and 5 segments. These sections include an introduction, a stanza (or verse), a chorus, a stanza, a chorus, a bridge and a coda (or repetition of the chorus). Within the field of music video studies, it is generally accepted that videos follow this segmentation in some way. Simeon (1992) talks about differentiating between correspondence or agreement such as kinetic correspondence, syntagmatic correspondence, and content correspondence between image and music (with its lyrics). Kinetic correspondence is that between movement of the singer’s body, objects or other elements of the staging with respect to the rhythm/speed of the music (beats per second, for example). It is most often found in performance music videos, in choreographies or formulas where the rhythm or tempo of the music is displayed by visual parameters (change of plane, type of camera movement, etc.). Syntagmatic correspondence refers to the structural mode of the music video and how it corresponds to the division of the music into sections. This type has to do with staging/stage changes at times of section changes (from stanza to chorus and vice versa; from chorus to bridge, etc.). Therefore, knowing if a music video contains any of these correspondences relays interesting information about the genre and the interest in the song, although it is usually related to the musical element of the song and not to its lyrics. 164 Guarinos, V.; Sedeño-Valdellós, A. CLAC 100 (2024): 161-170 3. Objectives, methodology and sample The main objective of this research is the discovery of the relationship between the song and the visual support of the music video that gives an audiovisual body to the song and forms an organic whole. To this end, the partial objective of the study is to analyse the relationships between the song’s lyrics and musical genre, between the song’s structure and that of the music video, between the song and the performers’ and other characters’ gestures, and between the song and the model of the visual and aesthetic world represented in the visual images of the video. The starting hypothesis presupposes that music has more power than the lyrics (as if they were two different entities) when it comes to influencing the textual arrangement of the music video in all its audiovisual components, depending on the musical genre it belongs to, and that this musical importance becomes much more acute as the genre becomes more mainstream. This exploratory work on the interrelationship of lyrics, music and visual components in music genre videos uses a sample selection of songs/music videos from recent pop/rock—popular music in Spanish that has found success in the last five years. For this purpose, the songs in Spanish listed among the most successful international songs of each year in this time frame, between 2015 and 2019, have been separated into a total of 10 per year, the 10 most successful songs in Spanish. The charts (both sales, downloads and views) used for the selection of the corpus have been Promusicae1 and El Portal de Música2, in addition to the lists of the 50 most played songs on Spotify, with almost 16 million followers globally and 2 lists in Spanish. The resulting corpus of songs and performers is as follows (Table 1): 1 https://www.promusicae.es/estaticos/view/23-annual-charts 2 https://www.elportaldemusica.es/lists Table 1. The top ten songs in Spanish from 2015 to 2019 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 1 Nicky Jam/Enrique Iglesias. El perdón Enrique Iglesias. Duele el corazón Luis Fonsi. Despacito Aitana. Lo malo Don Patricio. Contando lunares 2 Gente de zona/ Mark Anthony. La gozadera Carlos Vives/ Shakira. La bicicleta Danny Ocean. Me rehúso Daddy Yankee. Dura Daddy Yankee/ Snow. Con calma 3NIcky Jam. Travesuras Morat. Cómo te atreves Maluma. Felices los 4 Becky G/Natti Natasha. Sin pijama Pedro Capó/ Farruko, Calma 4 Da Soul. Él no te da Nicky Jam. Hasta el amanecer Enrique Iglesias. Súbeme la radio Nio García/Darell/ Casper Mágico. Te boté Ozuna. Baila, baila 5 Paulina Rubio/ Morat. Mi nuevo vicio Joey Montana. Picky Nicky Jam. El amante Reik/Ozuna/Wisin. Me niego Rosalía/Balvin. Con altura 6 Osmani García/ Pitbull/Sensato. El taxi Juan Magan/ Luciana. Baila conmigo Nacho. Báilame Juan Magán/Mala Rodríguez. Usted Bad Bunny/Tainy. Callaíta 7Daddy Yanky. Sígueme y te sigo Chicho y Nacho/ Daddy Yanky. Andas en mi cabeza J Balvin/Willy William. Mi gente Ozuna/Turizo. Vaina loca Lunay/Daddy Yankee. Soltera 8Enrique Iglesias. Bailando Maluma. Borro cassette Wisin/Ozuna. Escápate conmigo Sofía Reyes/Jason Derulo. 1, 2, 3 Jhay Cortez. No me conoce 9 Juan Magan/ Paulina Rubio. Vuelve Ianchino/Pibull. Ay mi Dios Shakira/Maluma. Chantaje Aitana. Teléfono Anuel AA/Karol G. Secreto 10 Juan Magan. He llorado (como un niño) Cali y el Dandee/ Juan Magan. Por fin te encontré Manuel Turizo. Una lady como tú. Rosalía. Malamente Rosalía/Ozuna. Yo por ti, tú por mí Note. Source: self made The distribution by popular music genres of the selected corpus is as follows: –Pop/disco: 2 (2017 and 1018) 165Guarinos, V.; Sedeño-Valdellós, A. CLAC 100 (2024): 161-170 –Rock: 0 –Indie: 0 –House/EDM: 1 (2015) –Funk/R&B: 3 (2018 and 2019) –Reggaeton/latin: 44 (9, 2015; 10,2016; 9, 2017; 8, 2018; 8, 2019) The percentages of the genres in the corpus make up a chart that is clearly unbalanced towards reggeaton as the dominant genre. In order to include other types of nonmainstream music that are not represented in the hits, other components are intentionally included in the sample from a previous test, as significant to approaching the subject. Thus, in order to establish some kind of contrast regarding the results, we have included the analysis of two music videos that do not meet the criterion of being on the lists of hits: La deriva (Vetusta Morla, 2014) (poetic concept) and Como la piedra que flota (León Benavente, 2019) (reference performance), both in the pop genre. The final selection is shown in the table below (Table 2). Table 2. Reduced corpus selection Title Singer Link Pienso en tu mirá (2018) Rosalía https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_4coiRG_BI Yo por ti, tú por mí (2019) Rosalía/Ozuna https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2j3x0Vynehg Calma (2018) Pedro Capó/Farruko https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_zgKRBrT0Y Dura (2018) Pedro Capó/Farruko https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_zgKRBrT0Y Malamente (2018) Rosalía https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rht7rBHuXW8 Lo malo (2018) Aitana y Ana Guerra https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYXCsZunjRM Despacito (2017) Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJQP7kiw5Fk Bailame (2017) Nacho https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1J44C-PZ3E Me rehuso Danny Ocean https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbKcHy9cav0 Como la piedra que flota (2019) León Benavente https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbiC15VxxvU Andas en mi cabeza (2016) Chino y Nacho ft. — Daddy Yankee https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMTAQ-AJS4Y Candela Bad Gyal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qUEEDZDfgs Me pelea (2018) Dellafuente https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stC_Lsekh4w La deriva (2014) Vetusta Morla https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoQTtU9qDRY Note. Source: self made In the analysis process, three layers have been worked on: the textual level of the song; the textual level of the music video and the equivalences/discrepancies. The following template (Table 3) has been applied, which condenses the components according to the musical genre in each case, the type of music video, the expressive and semantic resources, space and time, and narrative and enunciation both of the song and of the resulting music video. The section on equivalences/discrepancies uses Simeon’s (1992) correspondence types, cited in the previous section, as well as the moments of section change and the way in which the structure, rhythm and basic beats of the song are displayed. Table 3. Applied analysis template Title/Label Genre Singer Writer Director Textual level. Song Discursive structure Poetic/ Narrative Voice/ person(s) Monologue/dialogue Narrator Semantic Literary resources Time Lexicon Order Duration Frecuency Textual level. Music video Type of music video Discursive structure Dialogue Visual semantic resources Visual technic resources Scenography Body acting/ gestures Time Edit 166 Guarinos, V.; Sedeño-Valdellós, A. CLAC 100 (2024): 161-170 Title/Label Genre Singer Writer Director Order Duration Frecuency Corresponden- ces Point Enunciation Time Space Acting performance Estructure Expressi- ve resources Rhythm Others Note. Source: self made 4. Results As general contextualisation, a first analysis points to performance as the essential type of staging in the analysed music videos: 99% belonging to the performance/conceptual category and 1% to the narrative category; 80% being referential and 20% poetic. It should be noted that most of these performances correspond to reggaeton or Latin pop music, while the conceptual ones have a flamenco pop component (Pienso en tu mirá and Malamente). The interest in the body and the visualisation of the performance is an important element, demonstrated by this high performance percentage. There is a tendency towards the referentiality of the discursive structure, which usually coincides with all performance music videos or narrative performances. The poetic structure, present in four cases, coincides with the type of conceptual or conceptual/performance music video (Candela by Bad Gyal and Me pelea by Dellafuente), which is scarcely represented in the sample. The results of the analysis at the textual level of the song, distributed by items of the analysis sheet, give the following data: –Discursive structures have much to do with the dominant gender and have almost entirely an introduction/ verse/bridge/verse/bridge structure. –Narrative genres are reduced to the poetic/emotional, with hardly any occurrence of the presence of narrative cores, except in a couple of cases. –The enunciation and the voices involved are simple, linked to an inner monologue in the first person perspective, alternating in most cases two singers (two real figures) who take on the same character and the same feeling, as a consequence of the collaboration of two singers in the performance of the song. Dialogue does not appear as a form of content expression. –The semantic fields in which the themes operate are those related to love, passion, sex, desire and enjoyment of life. –More limited lexicon, which enters the realm of vulgarity in many parts of the lyrics, both in terms of rude words and in their articulations presenting final apocopes similar to those of spoken language. Similarly, the literary resources used, in addition to repetition and rhymes (mostly assonant rhymes), are as limited as in the lexical level, they are unoriginal, onomatopoeic and feature metaphors of a sexual nature. We can see the use of diminutives with appreciative functions that confer subjectivity. –The lyrics’ temporal trajectory is flat; the time of the stories contained, as they are not narrative discourses, presents a linear timelessness, in contrast to the discursive time that, due to the repetition of the bridge, works with multiple time and cyclical time as far as form is concerned. The analysis of the textual layer of the music videos has these main features: –The most used type of music video is the performance (6 cases), followed by the mixed performance/conceptual ones (4) and performance/narrative (2). There are 3 instances of pure conceptual music videos. A clear referentiality is produced as the predominant discursive structure (in 9 cases), although poetic structures (3 cases), poetic referentiality (1, Báilame) and a case of narrative structure (Andas en mi cabeza) are also found. –There is no dialogue in most music videos, except in La deriva, which uses it in the beginning as a documentary type of scene that acts as a preface. –Regarding semantic and technical visual resources, we must mention the predominance of close-ups and mid-level shots of the singer/front man, especially in the choruses. In Lo malo and Me rehúso (Image 1) there is a play with saturated colour that tends to experiment with colorimetry; in contrast, there is saturated and hyper-realistic photography, especially in reggaeton music videos. –The shots are usually static, due to their short duration, although the use of the steadycam and crane shots, as in the performance segment of Andas en mi cabeza, can be highlighted. This matches a performance/narrative type of music video. The use of the extreme close-up in Candela and Pienso en tu mirá in relation to the lyrics (content correspondence) is noteworthy. –There is a prevalence of actions such as dancing and looks or references to the camera as is typical of performance (Me rehúso and Me pelea) and leisure and enjoyment activities at home. There are group leisure activities in streets or squares related to friendly encounters (Despacito, Dura or Calma) in outdoor locations. Other activities are linked to relationships (falling in love, proposing) or lack of love (Me rehúso and Lo malo). 167Guarinos, V.; Sedeño-Valdellós, A. CLAC 100 (2024): 161-170 Image 1. Me rehúso (Danny Ocean, 2017) –Regarding the performer’s gestures, it is worth noting how the female performers (Rosalía, Aitana and Ana Guerra) use their arms in different ways during their performance: raising them (sideways and upwards) and waving them more. Meanwhile, male singers use their hands more as well as more representative gestures (holding their hands up and begging (Calma); turning around the head (Andas en mi cabeza) (Image 2), crossing arms, moving their arms as if pedalling (Dura) (Image 3), pointing their finger at the viewer, begging or bowing forward (Despacito), making fists, flapping hands as though asking a question or pleading (Báilame or Me rehúso). Candela, by Bad Gyal, in spite of having a female performer, is parsimonious in performance gestures; she does not go beyond pointing her finger forward, smoking or playing with (raising) a cigarette, in a referential gesture regarding the title/hook of the song (the performer dances and smokes, she seems to do nothing else). This significance of the gestures accompanying the lyrics’ discourse seems to be especially important in urban genres (hip-hop, Latin pop, reggaeton) and almost disappears in indie style songs such as Como la piedra que flota (hand on the microphone and another accompanying the dance) or La deriva (no performance or visualisation of its performers). Image 2. Andas en mi cabeza (Chicho y Nacho/Daddy Yanky, 2016) 168 Guarinos, V.; Sedeño-Valdellós, A. CLAC 100 (2024): 161-170 Image 3. Dura (Daddy Yankee, 2018) –There is a tendency to have a certain number of song speakers in the video. Although the songs usually take the form of an interior monologue without an interlocutor, 5 of the works analysed have 1 voice or 2 voices with 1 character as a result of the collaboration of the artists. In these cases, the videos use this double voice. –As for the editing, we must highlight the actions with parallel editing in collaborative video clips (Yo por ti, tú por mí) and with a tendency to narrate (Andas en mi cabeza, Báilame). Furthermore, we should highlight the examples of rhythmic editing or beats, where, by changing the shot or by using short shots, the musical pulse of the song is visualised: Dura or Malamente (about onomatopoeias or melismas of the lyrics). Finally, the analysis of the level of correspondences indicates that –The interrelationship of lyrics and images is anecdotal and not very elaborate, the image being an illustration of the lyrics in terms of the use of objects and sometimes also spaces. –The presence of the performer is not significant, since, due to the predominant type of music video, performers are usually completely present on the site during the entire video, representing the constant presence as the voice/speaker of the lyrics. –Regarding time, it tends to be produced in an indefinite linear mode in song and video, having both quite reiterative and repetitive frequencies as a consequence of the musical rhythm. –Although there is no example that directly illustrates all the lyrics, almost all videos contain some music/ video theme relationship, especially with their title. The title acts as a theme upon which the visual band establishes a certain amplification or exemplification in cases or situations. –Most correspondences are rhythmic or kinetic, although there is a tendency to explicitly display some noun isolated from the song (content correspondences); in songs like Candela and, above all, Pienso en tu mirá, this occurs systematically or repeatedly. In Pienso en tu mirá, the title contains a rhythmic and very repeated hook “Pienso en tu mirá, tu mirá, una bala en el pecho…” while the camera shows characters with blood on their chests, but also in the first verse with the terms “gold”, “neck”, “hole”, visualised through objects used by the singer. These content correspondences make use of the staging of visual micro actions (Image 4). –In terms of performance, there is usually some relationship between the genre and setting of the video and the number of performers with respect to the enunciation of the song. The performance is also used to add another meaningful message that continues an earlier moment in the song. –It appeals to visual metaphors of staging (dancing on fire, blood on the chest, as in Pienso en tu mirá) or there is a direct reference in gestures and behaviours (Candela). –A form of visualisation to be emphasised results from the use of onomatopoeias or repetitions of rhythmic lyrics that are accompanied by the visual accumulation of hyper-short shots (of barely seconds) with two fundamental effects: that of metaphorical sexualisation (as in Dura, which contains a montage to the beat or synchronic with the musical pulse, which transforms the hook of the song into a clear sexual reference); and that of onomatopoeic visual equivalence with respect to the lyrics (in the case of Despacito and Malamente). 169Guarinos, V.; Sedeño-Valdellós, A. CLAC 100 (2024): 161-170 Image 4. Pienso en tu mirá (Rosalía, 2018) 5. Conclusion As a general framework for the conclusions of this research, we can state something already known, which is the present-day extension of the prevalence of performance. This involves narrativeless visual elements where the purely visual is hypertrophied with respect to other elements, distancing the music video from the narrative complexity that would subject it to the construction of a world model with a story behind it that would link it to the lyrics of the song. This reduces the narrative production of the music video to the point of simplicity when, precisely, the discourse of the popular music video should want to establish an amplification of the meaning through this image/music/text construct that is the music video. This is especially true for Latin pop and reggaeton. In contrast, the pop videos analysed show great differences, demonstrating that music genre is fundamental in determining the differences in the creators’ intentionality and, therefore, in the results of the construction of the music video, which, for this purpose, opt for the poetic/abstract rather than the physical presence of the performer. With the aim of building a multiplicity of feelings, the performer’s hand gesture brings intentionality, through its movement, to parts of the lyrics, punctuating them, although from a musical approach, as we pointed out in the hypothesis. This perhaps addresses a need for interrelation with the fan/listener, anchoring the lyrics with said rhythmic correspondence of the visual and the musical, along with the hand movements, which point to a specific kind of pragmatics that serves in the sample analysed to set a mode of production of the music video of this type of genre (especially Latin pop and reggaeton, as we noted). This co-expressiveness, therefore, is confirmed by the predominance of music in the arrangement of the text. The visual band and gestures of the performer punctuate, affirm and amplify by building discursively. Some aspects, however, show an evolution, as is the case of enunciative authenticity: most of lyrics analysed included an “I” that addresses an absent “you” to talk about their common relationship and that appears almost from the first verse of the song—to which we must add that they are heterosexual couples. It does seem that the multiplication of real subjects for the interpretation of a single character subject, which is maintained in the scenic representation of the music video, has increased in number. Enunciation is one of the few elements of the mainstream music video construct where there is a clear correspondence between the lyrics and the presence in the audiovisual story. However, it seems to carry on in an already known stagnation in pop and rock, as referenced in the theoretical foundations. Visual resources, like literary resources in lyrics, do not involve any difficulty or subtlety, leaving everything in plain view and not as a mere suggestion or complication of visual reading by the viewer. The reggaeton lyrics, in this case, showcase a language of scarce resources and themes and/or semantic fields, resorting in many occasions to the use of the lyrics as a mere reiterative sound, which diminishes their semantic value in favour of its use as yet another sound within the musical ensemble. On the other hand, the lyrics’ structures are homogeneous, far from structural originality and repetitive in terms of architecture, dominated by