The artist of the song is an attractive brunette in her
twenties. If the artist is considered attractive by the audience, the product
(the song) is often found to be more popular as people want to listen and
watch this person. Carly wears a sleeveless top with jeans, earrings and lipstick
which is characteristic of the female stereotype. These accessories, as well as
the lyrics can be relatable to the females in the audience. The artist
throughout the video wears a total of three outfits. In the other two, Carly is
in the same clothes but with a throw-over type blouse when seen singing in the
video, and in a crop-top and short denim jeans. These outfits can be considered
sexy without being revealing. This suggests that the artist does not want to
come off as trashy or intentionally seductive to the audience. This is a
challenged convention of the pop genre on the female role in the video but not
the male. The male at the start is shown as muscular and handsome executing
masculine tasks such as mechanics and mowing the lawn. This to a large extent
is very stereotypical of a male in this music genre compared to the male role
seen in the punk/metal genre.
Several props are used in the music video to emphasise the
lyrics or attract the audience. One example of this would be the book that Carly
holds whilst looking at her crush. The books title isn't well visible but what
the camera does allow the audience to see is the couple on the front being
intimate. This suggests romance is a feature that this person wants in her life
but is struggling to have this at the early point in the video. This also ties
in with the genre type. During a sequence of jump cuts we see the artist washing
her car in a seductive fashion in an attempt to grab the crush's attention.
However, the use of these cuts suggests that she is not achieving this but
looks silly and slapstick instead. This is further emphasised when she falls
off of the car. This part of the video expresses another challenge against the
stereotypical view of a female- we do not expect her to be clumsy like this. In
the end, this clumsiness gets the attention of the male which surprises her and the audience.
Overall, I believe that this song and its video has a
positive effect on the audience compared to other artists in the genre such as
Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber. These artists are popular for their
controversial videos and lifestyles; Cyrus being completely naked in a music video and
Bieber's off-stage antics which landed him in jail. Whilst the video tells a
story of a clumsy girl attempting to impress a male and subsequently failing,
the song tells the story of a female looking for a date, or even love, with the casual question "Call me maybe?" Either way, the artist's apprehensive
approach to finding love represents her as shy. If there was a moral to be told
from the song, it would be to have more self confidence in yourself but not to
judge anyone just by their looks. As seen, Carly does exactly this only to find
her crush go for somebody else who is of the same gender. I also believe that
this moral is somewhat hidden within the song but isn't noticeable to the
casual listener due to the catchy chorus and attractive characters.
