We
have decided to use a male artist called Charlie Jennings, who is
aged 16, from Leeds, and in terms of his background he grew up on a
council estate, playing his guitar and busking in hope of a better
life. He created a youtube channel at age 14, and gained quite a lot
of hits within a few years. At age 16, independent company
'Imaginary records' based in Greater Manchester who focus on
indie-rock and post-punk genres, found his material on youtube and
asked him to be signed with them.
In
terms of target audience we have decided to focus on the teenage
working class from the UK, particularly the northern region, because
then they can associate themselves with our artist and the issues
that his songs will be about, which creates a better more personal
connection, which is a typical convention of indie music. This
applies a lot to the male teenage audience, and with the female
teenage audience they can also create a connection through
attraction to our artist.
In
terms of his image, we want to keep our artist away from the
mainstream culture in order to be classed as indie, but not be too
individual to the point where the audience cant relate to him, or
that his image becomes the focal point of his performance. In terms
of being indie, he needs to look fresh but natural, like he hasn't
purposely been constructed, and so would typically wear things like
dark skinny jeans, hipster-style high street shirts and t-shirts,
vans or converse shoes, and natural brown straight hair in a floppy
fringe.
In
terms of props, we want Charlie Jennings to be typically indie where
he cares most about his music and his message, so we are giving him
a guitar that his audience can associate him with, that he can
typically use for his acoustic work and to show how music is his
focal point. To set him aside from other indie artists to make him
unique and independent we have decided to give him a particular
beanie hat that people could also associate him with, and fit the
rest of his image.
For
a break-out music video concept, we have been inspired by another
indie artist's music video - Ed Sheeran's A Team, where the focus is
on a girl and he barely appears in the video, because his message in
the song is more impoartant than the representation of himself. We
have also been inspired by other artists like the Vaccines, The
Libertines and the Arctic Monkeys who have a big performance aspect
of their videos, which is simple and again shows how important music
is as opposed to the mainstream culture of music artists. Therefore
we have decided to do a combination of the two, where the video
follows a girl who is being bullied, an important concept for the
target audience, and she gets her money stolen, therefore not being
able to afford the shopping, or the bus home, or to give money to a
busker (who happens to be our artist Charlie Jennings, to which this
part relates to his own life), and then the girl has to walk home in
the rain. When she gets home, it is revealed that her mother is
bedridden with an illness, where the girl has to look after her. All
of this sequence is put together with clips of our artist singing
with his acoustic guitar alone – his performance aspect. The whole
video is supposed to make the audience sympathetic, or able to
relate to it, which is what a lot of indie bands consider to be
important, whereas mainstream bands prefer to give off concepts that
an audience might envy or inspire to be like.
The
music video will be for our artist's song that made him famous on
youtube, an acoustic cover of Kings of Leon's – Radioactive,
another indie band, because this will create a likeness towards
Charlie for his audience if it is a song they already know,
especially with Charlie's own twist to the song. The lyrics also fit
well with the music video concept to portray a message, which also
shows how music is the most important feature here. We have chosen
to use a cover of this song by Ryan Clouse on youtube as an example
of this for our artist.
In
terms of the press, we have only ever chosen to do positive press,
because as an indie artist he doesn't need negative press to gain
media attention, as this is more of a mainstream idea. To make him
get quite well known, most press will start with his music reviews,
in music magazines that specialise in this area such as Q or NME,
which as first will be positive reviews, but as he begins to sell
out, won't be as positive, but not to an exreme effect. His own
facebook page and official website, which we have created (which
won't be as fancy as mainstream ones), which will be run by himself,
and not a team of professionals, will also gain him popularity and
press publicity. This is also another indie trait, because it shows
how he runs everything himself and wishes not to be constructed by
the industry.
Press
photos which we have taken ourselevs include simple things like
Charlie Jennings with his new girlfriend, which makes his small
audience feel like they are finding more out about his life
personally, and also photos from his live performances which will be
used on social networking and in the indie music magazines.
Press
release stories will include mostly positive things, because as for
negative things, not many people would care, because he isn't as
well known or shown as perfect construction, like mainstream artists
are. But to gain him popularity and make it look like Charlie is a
nice caring person who is in the industry for what he is passionate
about, and not for the fame, money and image. Taking all this into
consideration, we have decided that a press release story about him
that will involve his charity work, such as putting on a concert in
favour of the British Heart Foundation and singing in a children's
hopsice to entertain them. These types of things could also be ideas
for home-made style future music videos which have a personal memory
feel, inspired by Lana Del Rey's.
People
that have inspired us to create an artist like this, are other
single male indie artists like Jake Bugg and Ben Howard, who have
similar image and similar props, who have gained a lot of popularity
recently. Another artist is Ed Sheeran, who we liked because he also
has a guitar but it was the idea that he has so much meaning and
messages to portray in his songs, and has low budgets for his
videos, showing how he cares more about his music than money. The
View, The Vaccines and The Mexannines are examples of male indie
bands that have inspired us due to their growing fanbase despite
being indie, and also the performance aspect of their music, there
isn't much editing and front stage/back stage personality – what
you see is what you get.
The Construction andRepresentationofLanaDelReyasanIndieartist.
Elizabeth Woolridge Grant (stage name: Lana Del Rey) is an American singer-songwriter aged 27 from New York City. She is best known for her unique voice, lyrics and vintage image, claiming herself to be like a 'gangsta Nancy Sinatra'. Initially she is a constructed 'indie' artist - independent from the mainstream culture and record labels. In terms of her background, she claims to have been discovered living in a trailer park writing songs for a living, and had alcohol dependency at the age of 14. Other sources have said her father is a multi-millionnaire, who bought her record contracts - she didn't make it on her own, and there are conspiracies as to whether symbolism has shown she was abused by her father as a child, due to her songs like 'put me in a movie' and 'lolita', or whether she has been in abusive relationships with men due to imagery in videos such as 'born to die' and 'blue jeans'. Before she was famous she used her name 'Lizzy Grant' and released her first EP and album, which firstly weren't popular, but she soon shot to fame as 'Lana Del Rey' in 2011 with over 20 million hits in the first month on youtube with the single 'videogames' and has made an extreme amount of sales with her album 'Born to Die' - within the range of a fully signed mainstream artist as well.
In terms of her image, Lana Del Rey is constructed to be unlike the mainstream style, where she is dressed in clothes and had her make-up and hair styled to look more like a 1950's vintage neo-noir pin-up model, where 'vintage' is a recurring theme associated with her in her song style, music videos and dress sense. The poses she is seen in make her seem sexually aware and sophisticated, unlike the playful and over-sexualised mainstream artist women. This gives her a sense of identity what her audience will reference her with, which makes her 'unique' - a common idea in the construction of 'indie' artists, where here she is almost like the American version of the 'Amy Winehouse effect'. However, with so much focus on her image and identity, this takes less focus off the actual music, where the music is what an indie artist is usually about, and image is usually considered a mainstream idea, and therefore can Lana Del Rey be then fully classed as an independent artist? Another idea that goes against her 'indie attire' is her plastic surgery, where she has physically reconstructed her face to fit her material image, and her style of music, which although makes her look different in order to fit 'indie' criteria, the idea that she has done this is normally associated with mainstream artists who have a larger focus on their image to impress a wider audience. She also contradicts herself when saying 'I'm not trying to create an image or a persona. I'm just singing because that's what I know what to do' when she clearly has been constructed with a vintage, sexual image for people to associate her with, however quoting her intentions like this does make her seem like she has constructed herself to be an indie artist to her audience.
Lana Del Rey's lyrics are extremely emotional and meaningful, and seem apparent that they relate to her personally. This sets her apart as an indie artist away from the mainstream culture where current popular music themes involves upbeat dance music about parties and fun and other related activities that are supposed to relate to a wider audience, whereas it is apparent Elizabeth's songs are about her and her life personally, or at least that's what she tries to put forward as a message, where a current independent music idea is that the music only reaches to a smaller audience who can relate to an artist because the music is only about that artist and their own opinions of what is important to sing about, where in this case, 'love' or 'abuse' or the idea of being damaged or living in a fractured world, are popular theme in her songs, as her producer David Kahne says: 'The country is fraying at the edges; she wanted to look at that edge, at destruction and loss, and talk about it.' Her actual vocals are deep, slow and don't have much of a range of pitch, which is almost like the neo-noir style of vocals in the 20th century, which again fits with her theme of 'vintage' to make her unique, and therefore 'indie'. However, there are a few factors in more of her recent songs that suggest she is trying to compete with mainstream artists, which then really destroys the whole point of being indie. These include trying to rap in 'National Anthem' and creating a lengthy almost cinematic video for 'Ride', including dialogue and credits, which has been compared to a lot of videos by Lady Gaga - a massive mainstream artist.
Lana Del Rey's music videos themselves have represented her as an indie artist to an extent. When she was only known as 'Lizzy Grant', her music videos were very obviously home-made and very poor quality, for example in the song 'Put Me In a Movie' which is based on the book 'Lolita', the quality of the camera was dire, and a series of clips from other videos which don't belong to Elizabeth are also placed in quite randomly, yet also still fit with the theme of the song, as well as filmed clips of her in quite obvious home settings and not a studio, to show how she has not made it big, does not have a large budget, and therefore is not mainstream. At this time she was not famous at all, but even when she did shoot to fame as 'Lana Del Rey' with the song 'video games', she still continued with the home-made style of video, with a hand-held low quality camera and a sequence of clips randomly shot to seem almost like home-video memories, with her unique vintage and personal dress-sense, different to the mainstream style videos, with an obvious lower budget, and to make it look like her music is personal to her. These are all characteristics of an indie artist. However, gradually, her videos began to get more and more professional. 'Summertime Sadness', although still very indie with the use of home-video techniques, obviously has a slightly higher budget with the use of special effects such as smoke and specialised lighting. These videos contrast highly with her more recent videos. For example, in the video for 'Born to Die', Lana Del Rey is shown sitting in a throne in a grand church or hall of some kind where the lighting makes it look almost like a studio, with very professional make-up and hairstyle, and Tigers sat at each side of her. This represents her to have a higher status, and also to be more wealthy, which typically a mainstream concept. Alongside this in the video is a narrative of a love story between Lana and a man, however narrative is also a very mainstream music principle, compared to the aspect of performance which is stereotypically indie. The same is applied to the video 'Blue Jeans', where although the budget isn't as high as typical mainstream videos, because the whole thing is simply shot in a swimming pool, the editing and filming is very 'polished' with a more diverse range of camera angles, editing speeds and editing techniques. This includes the use of tamed crocodiles, the fact the whole thing is shot in very high quality and black and white, and the use of techniques like slow motion. However, there are still running themes within all of Lana Del Rey's video that could make her still be considered indie. These include American Symbolism and sexual domination symbolism, such as the use of the American Flag in 'Born to Die', and a music video about JFK for 'National Anthem', and her lover acting violent towards her, such as in 'Born to Die' where he grabs her head and forces her to kiss him, and in 'Blue Jeans', where he forces his fingers into her mouth, and when he grabs her neck and pushes her under the water. These concepts are about things that are personal to her, and don't represent perfect and popular lifestyle like mainstream artists usually portray, which therefore still show 'indie' traits. Another recurring theme which makes Lana Del Rey's videos be perceived as 'indie' is her vintage look. For example, 'Blue Jeans' although quite polished for an indie artist, is all in black and white, and she still as an artist looks vintage in terms of her costume. At the beginning of 'National Anthem' the camera filter is made to look like an old black and white film camera, as she portrays herself as iconic vintage figure, Marylin Monroe.
In terms of press and media, Lana Del Rey, (Elizabeth Grant) has had mixed reviews over her music and image. At first she had very positive headlines about her being a 'fresh new breakthrough in the music industry' and about her 'unique voices and themes that can inspire her dedicated audience', but that only happened after she re-released her music because it wasn't popular enough, which shows just how far away from mainstream it was considered. She is also being constantly put in fashion magazines for her specialised taste in her vintage indie image, and her sales figures and popularity is constantly being advertised by her supporters. However, purposely trying to bring her as a major icon in the positive press to bring her attention as a person as well as her music, creates a more mainstream effect than possibly an indie one. She became very popular through social networking site 'Tumblr' where meaningful lyrics and photos related to indie music is often posted where people can associate themselves with it, which gained a fan-base. However, after performing live on Saturday Night Live, the headlines turned negative where she was incredibly slated by her poor performance and poor live vocals. This portrayed her a 'fake' where her album vocals seemed clearly over-edited, and not what an indie artist is all about, where Crave claimed the outcome was 'a painfully embarrassing mess, a collapse of inflated promise', and also revealed that her twitter profile says "EVERYTHING I WANT I HAVE. MONEY, NOTORIETY AND RIVIERAS - I EVEN THINK I FOUND GOD - IN THE FLASH BULBS OF YOUR PRETTY CAMERAS",which portrays her as selfish and in the industry for the fame, which is by far not how indie artists are usually represented. This also gave way for other companies to start critisising her music in general, such as the USA Today saying 'an unevitable letdown, as one unconvincing, lethargic vocal bleeds into the next'. This kind of press can represent her as an indie artist depending on the interpretation. By suggesting she is a bad vocalist suggests that she isn't good enough to be mainstream, but also that she is still carrying on regardless, because of her dedication to her music, like most indie artists. However it also shows how in the industry she is just 'acting' to gain an audience and cannot pull off her own style of music, which is written by her, for herself, which is what indie artists should be able to do. Overall, although both negative and positive press can show Lana Del Rey as an indie artist, the general media hype from it has gained her loads of attention in the press, which continues to increase, which is usually based around mainstream artists - the idea that any type of press is good press because it puts them in the limelight, and so in terms of the media industry and the attention she receives, can is Lana Del Rey an indie artist in this sense?
Her song 'young and beautiful' is now part of the soundtrack for major new film 'the Great Gatsby', which would stereotypically make her mainstream, because usually big films use big artists as a promotion technique. However, the film genre is very neo-noir and very vintage, which is the exact image Lana Del Rey wishes to portray, which means the film could act as a good promotion for her as an indie artist with an image her audience can relate to. In terms of my own opinion, I have mixed views about Lana Del Rey. Firstly, I think she has a lovely voice, only when edited in a studio though, and therefore some of her songs I really like, and this also applies to some of the lyrics in her songs. However, her voice isn't very capable of varying the style of songs, and therefore a lot of her songs sound the same, and her voice seems to 'drone on' a lot in a quite a monotone way, which then makes me feel like I would not be able to listen to a lot of her music without getting bored, and would therefore not be encouraged to buy her albums. I have never met her so I can't judge her personality entirely, but from what the press has portrayed, I don't particularly like her as a person due to her lying about her background and for lying about her plastic surgery, and from quotes like 'people who don't respect my music are the reason I want to drink again', I consider her too vain, and attention seeking for sympathy. The main thing I question though, is that how after all the factors that may show Lana Del Rey as more of a mainstream artist, can she still be considered 'indie'?
To conclude, due to recurring themes and editing styles and imagery of her music and music videos, Lana Del Rey can still be considered an indie artist, especially because she fits the definition of not being signed to a major record label in the industry, however, due to implications within her music videos, press and popularity, as an artist she has a lot of mainstream traits, which suggests that in the future, she will probably sell-out and become a mainstream artist herself.
In terms of press and media, Lana Del Rey, (Elizabeth Grant) has had mixed reviews over her music and image. At first she had very positive headlines about her being a 'fresh new breakthrough in the music industry' and about her 'unique voices and themes that can inspire her dedicated audience', but that only happened after she re-released her music because it wasn't popular enough, which shows just how far away from mainstream it was considered. She is also being constantly put in fashion magazines for her specialised taste in her vintage indie image, and her sales figures and popularity is constantly being advertised by her supporters. However, purposely trying to bring her as a major icon in the positive press to bring her attention as a person as well as her music, creates a more mainstream effect than possibly an indie one. She became very popular through social networking site 'Tumblr' where meaningful lyrics and photos related to indie music is often posted where people can associate themselves with it, which gained a fan-base. However, after performing live on Saturday Night Live, the headlines turned negative where she was incredibly slated by her poor performance and poor live vocals. This portrayed her a 'fake' where her album vocals seemed clearly over-edited, and not what an indie artist is all about, where Crave claimed the outcome was 'a painfully embarrassing mess, a collapse of inflated promise', and also revealed that her twitter profile says "EVERYTHING I WANT I HAVE. MONEY, NOTORIETY AND RIVIERAS - I EVEN THINK I FOUND GOD - IN THE FLASH BULBS OF YOUR PRETTY CAMERAS",which portrays her as selfish and in the industry for the fame, which is by far not how indie artists are usually represented. This also gave way for other companies to start critisising her music in general, such as the USA Today saying 'an unevitable letdown, as one unconvincing, lethargic vocal bleeds into the next'. This kind of press can represent her as an indie artist depending on the interpretation. By suggesting she is a bad vocalist suggests that she isn't good enough to be mainstream, but also that she is still carrying on regardless, because of her dedication to her music, like most indie artists. However it also shows how in the industry she is just 'acting' to gain an audience and cannot pull off her own style of music, which is written by her, for herself, which is what indie artists should be able to do. Overall, although both negative and positive press can show Lana Del Rey as an indie artist, the general media hype from it has gained her loads of attention in the press, which continues to increase, which is usually based around mainstream artists - the idea that any type of press is good press because it puts them in the limelight, and so in terms of the media industry and the attention she receives, can is Lana Del Rey an indie artist in this sense?
