Settle Down Analysis

Remember when you were little, and you had wanted, dreamed about being an adult and getting to do all the things that adults get to do? Well, “Settle Down,” by Kimbra, is a song about just that. The song is about marriage and “settling down” from a little girl’s point of view, as well as adulthood, with her idealism of what being married and growing up actually means. From the imagery in the video, it seems like the woman in the relationship is the ideal wife, cooking, cleaning, keeping house, while the husband-mannequin (man-nequin?) goes out and does his own things. That is the ideals that our society promotes, especially to young girls; the “traditional marriage,” with the husband who is the breadwinner of the family, and the wife who stays at home and looks after their children. In the video, young girls are being portrayed as adults, and the lyrics reflect the mentality of what children believe a traditional marriage is like. Settling down, eating together, having a baby, and the almost innocent “wishing upon a star’ to keep “him by her side.” The dolls in the background and the fifties-esque era gives the video a whole dollhouse feel,
Star so light and star so bright
Keep him by my side”

This is introducing a third female character, Angela Vickers, who is also being played by a young girl. The singer narrating this warns her husband to “run from her,” therefore placing all the blame on Angela Vickers, who is apparently the one responsible for seducing her husband and therefore is none of his fault. This is the viewpoint society often assumes when a man cheats on their significant other, that the other woman is the one at fault and that the man who cheated is not.

The other verse is her wishing upon a star (a very childish thing to do) while cleaning and doing household chores,(quite an adult thing to do) and that shows how, when put under stress, both sides of our mentality comes out to