How indie-rock clothing has changed over the past 25 years

Here are four artists that come under the indie-rock category, to the left is 'The Kooks', to the right is 'The Killers', in the bottom left is 'The Kinks' and in the bottom right right is the 'Beastie Boys'. As you may be able to tell medium-long hair styles tend to be the main presentation of indie-rock bands. Clothing changes depending on what sort of style that the band go for. In these examples, the 'Beastie Boys' are all dressed in matching urban street gear (tracksuits, flat caps, high top trainers) This matches the sort of style of sound that was on the album shown where it brought together the best of the 'Beastie Boys'. 
Whereas 'The Kinks' in the bottom right are all wearing matching tailored suits because this was the sort of style that was popular back in the 1960's, although 'The Kinks' are not actually an indie-rock band, some of their songs such as 'lola' and 'you really got me' both have the same sort of sound that was then introduced massively in the 80's. 
'The Killers' really are just a very plain dressed sort of group, same as 'The Kooks'. However because of 'The Killers' success when it comes to selling records, dress sense was not the issue, however what we can pull together from the picture in the top right is that they are wearing dark clothing which was fairly popular when they were first coming in. 
Finally in the top left 'The Kooks' carry the same band representation style that the beastie boys did. However now the clothing style has obviously changed, to a more casual clothing sense. Also with 'The Kooks' they are the only band who have people smoking on the front cover, showing how popular it has now become over the past 10 years.

Storylines In Music Videos

In the indie-rock genre there are two real storylines that stick out. This is either a video of the band/artist when they are playing the song live for example 'Red Hot Chili Peppers - The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie' which is a live recording of them on Venice Beach, California. 

Newer artists may go for a completely different storyline which goes with the lyrics, in examples that I have already used for this blog, 'Beastie Boys - Sabotage' tells the story of the band as detectives tracking people down. Because the music is high tempo and edgy, they can use a load of different effects in their video to enable them to make the most of the chase scene in the video. 

The same goes for 'Ed Sheeran's - A-team' This however narrates the story of a girl addicted to drugs, living on the streets of London. She tries to sell magazines for money, only managing to sell one to the artist of the song, Ed Sheeran. The girl struggles so much that she decides to sell her body, to earn money. It provided an income in general for the young woman. Later on, the pain became too much to bear and she just wants to end it all. This goes with the lyrics from the song as well, "...and in a pipe she flies to the motherland." which indicates her giving up and smoking drugs to enable her to end her misery and be free.

Album Cover Ideas

Here I have done my first collage of ideas for my album cover and ideas to use in my music video. In the top left, this is an example of light graffiti which is used quite often now on lots of music videos, adverts and album covers. The reason why I would want to use it is because it is very modern and new which means that it will fit in perfect with whats out now. In the top right I have included a fisheye lens shot as an idea for my music video, because its a fairly reguarly used shot for indie-rock music videos as it is an urban style of shooting. In the bottom left i have got a out of focused, high light shot which is also another idea i am interested in using for my music video, as I want it to be bright, modern and artistic. Finally in the bottom right I have an image taken from 'The Kooks' album. Which follows a fairly traditional style of album cover, the reason why this fits so well is because of the song on the album 'You really got me', this also fits well with the sort of storyline I want from my music video. 

Album covers from the indie-rock genre

 

The Beastie Boys are one of the artists that I have been looking at in detail. When they released their first album they were known for their unique/crisp sound. As you can see their album covers tend to have the same sort of layout with the band.

The three albums below are 'The Killers - Day & Age', 'Ed Sheeran - Loose Change'  and 'You Me At Six - Hold Me Down'. The Killers use the same font for their band name on every album that they do which makes it easy to recognise and very well established. The Ed Sheeran album was his first album released as a solo artist, previously he had released a debut album with a girl that he went to college with however as a solo artist 'Loose Change' is his first album.

Choosing my genre!

The genre that I will be choosing for my music video is going to be indie-rock. I am still questioning what sort of name the band/artist will have and as for the style of music video that it is going to be, it will be very delicate and fairly artistic. I am also still deciding wether or not to make the video coloured, black & white or just one colour showing through, film noir style. 

Screenshots of Ed Sheeran's 'A-Team'

As you can tell I have taken a lot more screenshots of this video. This video is Ed Sheeran's 'A-Team' and it tells the story of an attractive yet troubled young woman who goes from bad to worse. The thing that I like about this video is that it is very creative and expressive and it fits very well with the lyrics being sung by the artist. Also you get a wide variety of camera shots throughout the video, for example the 3rd picture above shows an out of focused medium shot of her walking down a busy high street, this expresses that she is lost - not in a sense of direction but in her mind, she doesn't know what is happening to her, compare this to the 2nd shot, the top right picture, there is another medium shot however this one is much clearer and her facial expression shows that she is where she wants to be. Another thing that can be said about this video is, because it is edited in black and white it shows her comparative side between her dark and bright side of life. Hence the sense of her being where she wants to be and being happy to when it is a very dark ambience in the 4th picture when she is having sex with someone for money so that she can buy drugs. 

Screenshots of Kasabian video - Shoot the Runner

Here are two screenshots taken from the video 'Shoot the Runner' by Kasabian, as you may already be able to tell there is a lot of colour in this video. The paint that gets thrown across the screen is in sync with the notes played by the band the colours alternate between blue, red, purple, orange & white. This shows Kasabian's creative side to their band. It was one of the first videos to use this type of image capturing and editing. Jim Abbiss from the music production company in charge of Kasabian has also worked with other indie-rock artists Arctic Monkeys. 

Number of people listening to different indie-rock artists

From the people that I asked about which era of indie-rock they enjoyed the most, I also asked which artists they liked in that genre. 18 out of the 31 enjoyed listening to Kasabian, whereas only 6 of the 31 liked listening to Arcade Fire. Compare this to the massive amount of people that actually enjoyed listening to other bands as well as the ones listed was quite high. So now I can sort of start collaborating some ideas together about what sort of sounds the indie-rock followers are really looking for as well as what sort of creative videos they are interested in especially Ed Sheeran and Kasabian. 

Which period of indie-rock is most popular?

Previously to this I collected a survey that showed that indie-rock was the most popular out of a randomly asked 100 people of mixed ages. After I gathered this information I thought I would find out which era of indie-rock they most enjoyed and it showed a correlation that showed that as indie-rock has aged, more and more people have started listening to it, especially between 2001 and the present day. 

Survey

This is a survey I collected data for which was to find out what sort of music most people listen to these days, ages raging between 10 & 50. I think it was quite a surprise to see how popular indie-rock has become over the last 30+ years starting off with bands such as R.E.M and The Smiths, however it really kicked off in the 90's with much more bands being introduced upon the scene with bands like Nirvana, Soundgarden & Pearl Jam. Now over the past 5-10 years it has seen even more bands coming onto the scene with bands such as: Kasabian, Arctic Monkeys, You Me at Six and many more. The thing is what makes indie-rock so popular?  And what period of indie-rock is the most popular from the people we asked? 

Coldplay - Paradise

This is the 'Paradise' album cover by 'Coldplay'. They are a much more up to date british-rock band that formed together in 1996. Although they started up in the late 90's, they really started to appeal to the public in the early 2000's. They have won all sorts of awards and all together earned 52 awards from 144 nominations. Their videos are known for being extremely creative especially their video for 'Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall' which uses a wide variety of styles of creativity.

Link for video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyMhvkC3A84

Biggie Smalls - Duets: The Final Chapter

This is Biggie Smalls' last album called 'Duets: The Final Chapter'. Biggie Smalls was known for being one of the most inspirational rappers of his time alongside Tupac. In 1997 he was shot during the release of his album 'Life After Death' however he still went on to win the 1998 best R&B/ Soul Album by the Soul Train Music Awards. One of Biggie Smalls' most famous songs was 'Juicy', the link for the video is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JZom_gVfuw

David Bowie - Aladdin Sane

This is the 'Aladdin Sane' album by David Bowie which was released in 1973. Bowie is one of the most popular rock artists of all time alongside 'The Beatles' and 'The Rolling Stones'. He is also known for his weird inventive ways of developing music videos, and known for always having a 'different' sound to everyone else at the time. 'China Girl' was one of David Bowies most famous videos, for its cinematography and storyline. 

Link for video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_8IXx4tsus

The Beatles - Abbey Road

This is the 'Abbey Road' Album by 'The Beatles' it is known for being the most iconic and most recreated album cover in the world, thousands of people yearly come to this spot on Abbey Road near the Abbey Road recording studio to recreate the image made by 'The Beatles' in 1969. As you can see there is no writing on the front cover of the album, this is because of the clear image that 'The Beatles' had of themselves back in the 60's which separated them from the rest of the bands in the world.

Types of genre's...

I have been researching into some potential genre's of music that I could maybe use to complete my task. Amongst the genre's have been: 60's rock, 70's & 80's pop, 70's new wave, 80's punk, Rap and Indie Rock.

From the 60's Rock category you have the names of 'The Rolling Stones', 'Led Zeppelin' & 'The Beatles'

From the 70's & 80's Pop category you have the names of 'David Bowie - Aladdin Sane' & 'Michael Jackson - Thriller'

From the 70's New wave category you have the names of 'Duran Duran - RIO', 'Culture Club' & 'The B-52's'

From the 80's Punk-Rock category you have the names of 'Ramones', 'The Police' 

From the Rap category you have the names of 'Tupac', 'Biggie Smalls' & 'NWA'

Researching into Music videos

So I start my blogging off for my exam question with the best and most popular music videos of all time. Amongst the names features Michael Jackson, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Run-DMC & Aerosmith, Madonna, Gotye, Adele, Nirvana & The Beastie Boys. All together a massive variety of different twists and styles of music. 

Here are a few links to some of the videos featured above:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOnqjkJTMaA - Michael Jackson - Thriller
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5rRZdiu1UE - The Beastie Boys - Sabotage 
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4B_UYYPb-Gk - Run-DMC & Aerosmith - Walk This Way
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UVNT4wvIGY - Somebody That I Used To Know 
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYEDA3JcQqw - Adele - Rolling In The Deep 

Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' album & video won the Grammy award in 1985, Three MTV awards in 1984 for best choreography, viewers choice and best performance in video and in 1999 was voted number one in the best 100 videos of all time and in 2009 was selected for the Nation film registry, and was the first music video to ever be selected for this. 

Exam Question

Hello and welcome to my A2 level Media Studies blog. Throughout this year I will be completing a set of tasks that follow with the creation of a promotion package for the release of an album, this will include a music promo video as well as a website homepage for the band and a digipak for the release of the bands album.