Genre

Genre is a style or category of art, music, or literature.

The genre of our song is Indie pop and the following is research and information about this.

History

·    Indie pop first originated in the UK in the mid-1980s

·    It started with bands being signed shop-based record labels such as ‘London's Rough Trade Records’ and ‘Glasgow's Postcard Records’

·    Bands like ‘The Smiths’ started the genre. 

·     It was an extension and inspired punks DIY ethics and ideologies.

·    This was a new genre of music as it was more melodic and less abrasive

·    The defining moment for indie pop as a genre was the release of NME's C86 tape in 1986- which had several different artist on it that where considered to apart of the indie pop genre.

Typical lyrical content and themes

The typical lyrical content and theme of indie pop is talking about popular culture and life- sometimes in a positive way, other in a negative way.  It deals with issues and topics that everyone experiences in their life at some point and that are a part of the 21^st century culture- falling in love, heart break, unhappiness and happiness for example. But what makes this genre different to pop is that the lyrics are far more poetic and symbolic to the meaning of their songs, rather telling the audience directly what’s happening to them in the song.

For example in the lyrics for ‘Hollywood’ by Marina and the Diamonds it talks about everything that wrong about the obsession with celebrity culture is really unhealthy and that we are influenced to much by the Hollywood media- it isn’t real. But rather than saying the literary she uses lyrics like ‘Hollywood infected your brain’ and ‘You're looking for the golden lie’.

Our song also follows this idea. Our song is about heartbreak- someone has hurt her. The artist has finally realised that break up is real and she can’t get over this. But instead of the lyrics saying it literary she uses lyrics like ‘As it heals the scabs/They crack and bleed all over again’ and ‘Mistakes and risks worth making/One like a crack that’s in my heart’

Musical Style

The musical style of an indie pop song very much depends on what the artist song is about. It unique from indie rock as it is more melodic, less abrasive, and relatively angst-free, so every indie pop song follows these ideas. If the song is about happy things (for example going on an adventure) that they will be a good jolly rhythm that the audience can follow along to and happy bonce about to. A good example of this is ‘Little Talk’ by Of monster and men.

However if the indie pop song is about more serious topics than it like that there is little effect, not many instruments and main just the artist voice sing about whatever is wrong. These types of song usually are about the lyrics and that often are what the artist wants them to focus on. Our song is a perfect example of this, there is just an acoustic guitar and the artist wants the listeners to really thing about the metaphors and symbolism of the lyrics.

Artist Representation

To gain a better understanding of the representation of indie pop artist, I looked at three of the biggest indie pop female singers- Lorde, Marina and the Diamonds and Ellie Golding.

 

This something we want to do with our performer in our music video. We want to stay true in the genre, so we won’t make our female actress look glamour’s and sexualized- we want the audience to focus on the song itself, not just the looks of it.  

Ideologies

The ideologies of a pop indie artist are usually about 21^st century life and everything that is wrong with it. They sometime talk about their own experience of this or they even uses the cultural of a nation. A really good example of this is ‘Royal’ by Lorde. The ideology of the song is about how today music is all about what is considered the "good life," filled with riches and fame, but not everyone can live that life, and so the average person is desperately reaching. Our song ideology is about how hurting and painful breaking up with someone really is.

Target Audience

The target audience of the indie pop music is teenagers/ young adults aged 15-25 of both genders. These types of people are just starting out in the world, so either are studying, have part time work or have only stated out a career. The age of the people are significant, as this age range tends to be when they start to realise all of what is wrong with our world and today society, so they want to listen to music that reflects this well.  These types of people come from normal backgrounds and will live good normal life’s.

Our target audience is teenage girl/ young adult females. The fact that the song is sung by a younger woman means that a teenage girl audience would naturally sympathise with her message. People can relate to a performer when they have age and gender in common with them. In addition, the song will relate to those that have experienced a problem like this. There is likely to be a huge number of teenage girls that have experienced heartbreak, and it is important that we cater to them by making a video that portrays the emotion realistically but creatively. Furthermore, the teenage girl target market is a large consumer of pop music. This reinforces the idea that we should aim the video for them because they would know what genre appeals to them, and they would look for more of this category. If we use some conventions of an indie pop video then they will be able to identify it as that genre, but if we subvert other conventions then it will stay interesting and original to them.