Lady Gaga: Madonna 2.0?

Lady Gaga - Bad Romance
Pop/Dance/Techno/Trance



Target audience:
-Tweenagers & teenagers
-Young females but also boys. Male gaze.
- Appeals because of makeup and dressing up but also because of her crazy, eccentric, outrageous style. She's controversial and seen as a rebel of the industry.
- 15 to 34 years.
-Sex appeal
- Gays (the pink pound). Very camp style.
- She plays with her gender identity, and encourages rumours questioning hers.

Using body to sell records?
- Yes, as her costumes are revealing throughout. She also is sexually provocative towards one male in the video, lap dancing for him and whispering in his ear.
- But she is "forced" to do so in the storyline as she drinks some date-rape style substance. She's then stripped whilst she tries to cover up. This is possibly a criticism of the media and music industry.

- There are argument for both sides, and it can be seen that the music video plays with this idea. Perhaps depending on where you were feminist or post-feminist which change your view.

Intertextuality:
-Links to Madonna's "Vogue" video. The infamous connical bra is mimicked in this video.
- A Clockwork Orange style setup at beginning. It was a very controversial film, and Lady GaGa wishes to be seen this way.
Postmodernism and the destruction of identity.

Further Music Video Research

Guns n Roses - Welcome To The Jungle



Heavy Metal/Classic Rock
Late 80's
The bands first single.

-Essentially a performance video but slight narrative aspect which links to the lyrics and themes of the song.
-Sexist (women as objects) mentality which is key to this style of band. Adds male gaze.
-Audience shown. Promotes live concerts.
-Clothing style/hair, typical of a glam rock band almost.
-Lots of midshots
-Two shots used frequently but Axl Rose (singer) appears in each of them.
-Stock footage intercut. (Again typical of rock videos).

Music Video Research

I have so far tried to research a wide range of genres and styles of music videos before I narrow down my own idea.

Guns N Roses - Paradise City

• Performance video - from concert where they were supporting Aerosmith.
• Black & white allows the video to be "timeless" and doesn't appear dated.
• Emphasis on Axl and Slash (two main icons of the band and rock music in general)
• No special effects - it's just the band being a band.
• Build up to concert shown as well as the actual performance
• Classic style video for rock genre.

Radiohead - Just


(Sorry for the poor quality. EMI blocked embedding on the official version)

• Concept video, very smart
• Band performance is secondary
• Subtitles for dialogue
• Strange/intelligent feel - similar to genre's attributes
• Directed by art film director
• Original (like the band)
• Older audience? as older character's are generally seen

Depeche Mode - Enjoy The Silence

• Concept video
• Strange tone (similar to step into darker music that was taken by Depeche Mode)
• No band performance - band are seen in a photoshoot style scene.

Thirty Seconds To Mars - Kings And Queens

• Artistic qualities (singer Jared Leto is an actor having appeared in films such as Requiem for a Dream, Fight Club, Panic Room, American Psycho)
• Perfomance/concept video
• Includes many fans shown in positive eco-friendly stance. Fans are key to the sound of this album, with backing singing throughout many songs.
• Sophisticated style - silhouettes
• Big budget?
• Older audience
  

Joy Division - Love Will Tear Us Apart

• Low budget 
• Performance essentially (strange elements are included though)
• Very basic - similar to original indie sound
• Setting is plain - working class appeal?

 Rusted Root - Send Me On My Way

• Hippie style music video
• Performance essentially
• Very rural setting - links to hippie movement (in touch with nature)
• Eccentric colours - again links to style and positivity
• Nostalgia for those of us who watched Matilda as a child (or more recently Ice Age)

Guns N Roses - November Rain

• Huge budget compared to earlier videos
• Very OTT - can see how band has changed style
• Narrative/performance
• Very long song and video
• Emphasis is still on Axl (and Slash) 
• Stage performance - sound band were going for
• Epic feel
• Infamous Slash guitar solo outside chapel
• Lighting of stage - dramatic

Michael Jackson - Thriller

• Performance/narrative
• Emphasis on Michael - looks directly into camera
• Heavily themed - stage show esque
• Big budget
• Extended versions of video - cinematic style
• Large use of costumes
• Lighting and stage create this almost show link feel the video

I will continue to add to this research before specifically looking further into one genre.

Heavy Metal Performance Videos Conventions

• Fast cutting and editing
• Focal Point is the singer (and often also the lead guitarist)
• Crowd are shown to promote their live shows
• Some form of narrative and/or conceptual aspects
• Backstage build up and/or tour footage
• Tracking or panning shots are used to create an energy about the performance
• Close ups of cymbals/bass drum/guitar fretboards
• Often a darker tone (but not always)
• Soundcheck footage

An example of this is the video for grunge band Alice In Chains song entitled "Would?".

Case Study - Metallica

Sub Genre Research: Grunge Metal

A personal favourite for me, grunge metal originated in Seattle, USA in the late 80s/early 90s, and is often referred to as "The Seattle Sound". It was influenced by early heavy metal, hardcore punk, and indie rock, and was originally seen as a combat to the mainstream hair metal movement. It had a distinctive sound of heavily distorted guitars and vocals, and distressed lyrical content. The key bands of the movement were Nirvana, Alice In Chains, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Mudhoney, Green River, Screaming Trees, Mother Love Bone Stone Temple Pilots (though from California) and supergroup Temple of the Dog and Mad Season.

Categorising Music Into Genres

We looked at all the diffent sub-genres that have sprung from the genre Heavy Metal. In total I found over 50 different sub-genres. This raises the question over why we need these genres and who catergorises bands into them. Is there a need for our music to be catergorised?

We as a class felt that bands or record labels actually promote sub genres so a band's style appears original and different. In fact alot of the bands actually still crossover the barriers of these sub genres, which was highlighted when someone felt Rage Against The Machine were industrial metal, whereas many others classed them as political rap metal with funk elements.

Wikipedia classes RATM as "Rap metal, funk metal, rap rock, alternative metal". This is infact correct as no electronic sounds are used, the band's album booklets always state "All sounds on this album are created by use of vocals, guitar, bass and drums only".

Performance, Concept, Narrative

Music videos are often sorted into three main categories - perfomance, concept or narrative.

Performance videos (as the name suggests) often focus on the live performance of the song by the band for a large portion, if not all, of the full length of the video. They are probably the quickest, easiest and, helpfully for indie bands, the cheapest style of music video. This means that many smaller bands will opt for performance videos. Importantly they were probably the most commonly used video styles dating all the way back to when music videos first began. Their key intention is to show the bands skill and the energy that the band has. This can often mean incorporating their target audience in the video in some way. The genre which probably makes the most use of performance video is rock music.

 This is the "clean version" of 2009's Christmas no.1 Killing in the Name by Rage Against The Machine. Their first music video perfectly captures their anger and energy:


Narrative videos feature a storyline - often based on the lyrics of the song or theme of the album. It is quite common for the actual band not to be shown in narrative videos or if they are shown they often have bit parts as actors. In this way music videos act as short films to a certain degree. Their intention this time is to reel the audience in to watching the story develop and finish, therefore actually watching the whole song.

Below is Aerosmith's narrative based video for Cryin':


Concept videos are arguably the most creative style of music video. They don't focus on a particular storyline and instead choose to explore a certain idea or ...concept. Again here the music video acts as a short artistic film intending to intrigue it's audience and grab their attention. This is more likely to be seen in creative genres of music rather than mainstream pop. The possibiltity of great success through viral distribution is quite often seen with this style of video.

A perfect example is New Order's True Faith:


More often than not though, music videos will not simply slot into one of these categories. Hybrid music videos combine aspects of each style - the most commonly seen is performance/narrative videos. Some videos even combine all three categories. As with most things there will always be exceptions to the rules, videos that play on the conventions of their categories, these are just the most commonly seen styles of video.