"Parental Advisory is a message affixed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to audio and recordings in the United Statescontaining excessive use of profane language and/or sexual references. Albums began to be labeled for "explicit lyrics" in 1985, after pressure from the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC). In 2000, the PMRC worked with the RIAA to standardize the label, creating the now-familiar black and white design."
This sign is recognised nationwide, and lets people know that they should expexct bad language, references to sex or drugs throughout the album. When creating our CD case we will have to put this on the front cover, as a few of the songs within the album use swearing, and/or refer to drugs. Although this label will not ban people of a young age from buying the album as in the UK anybody of any age can buy an album with the parental advisory label on it, it will guide certain people away from the album for the right reasons.
Our music video is mainly Performance based, so doesn't really have any props, only the instruments they play. The Concept based parts to the video consist of natural looking shots of the band, as we just took shots of them without any scripts, giving us the authentic look we wanted. As a result of this we didn't have any listed props, but here are a few items that appear in the video:
Arctic Monkeys were formed in 2002 inHigh Green, a suburb ofSheffield, the band currently consists ofAlex Turner(lead vocals, rhythm guitar),Jamie Cook(lead guitar),Nick O'Malley(bass guitar, backing vocals) and Matt Helders(drums, backing vocals). The band’s debut album ‘Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not’ became the fastest-selling debut album of British music history “When The Sun Goes Down” was only the second single by the band, and was released on 16 November 2005. The single was a hit and went straight to no.1 in the UK charts following the success of their first single. The video was directed by Paul Fraser, and was premiered on the 21st of December 2005. The video starredLauren SochaandStephen Graham. The music video used footage from a longer film,Scummy Man, which used the same actors who appeared in the music video to tell the story of 'Nina', the nameless "that girl there" from the song. The song falls into the Alternative rock genre, which is a very broad genre of music, giving it many characteristics. When The Sun Goes Down expresses some of these characteristics, such as lyrics addressing a topic of social concern, which in this case is prostitution and abuse. The music video is both concept and narrative based, the concept of the video being prostitution, and throughout the video we see the relationship between a young girl and a man providing the narrative part to the video.
The relationship between lyrics and visuals are mainly illustrative; the visuals on screen explain the lyrics and illustrate them. They are also amplified at some points throughout the music video. Straight away once the song has started, the lyrics of the first line are illustrated; “So Who's that girl there? I wonder what went wrong, So that she had to roam the streets”, as this is sung we see a young girl stood firstly in the snow, and then in what looks to be a block of council flats up against some railings in freezing cold conditions looking pretty rough. These images literally put pictures to the words, creating a perfect picture of the artist’s thoughts when they were writing the song. Another good example of the lyrics being illustrated comes in the form of the line “ She makes a subtle proposition, "I'm sorry love I'll have to turn you down" “. In the video we see the young girl playing a prostitute asking a passerby if he’d be interested, seeing her disappointment and desperation when she’s turned down. Throughout the song there are a few parts where the lyrics are amplified by the visuals on screen to really exaggerate the lyrics to the viewers. The best example of this is in the last few lines of the first chorus where we hear “They said it changes when the sun goes down”, we are introduced to a very strange character playing a gothic magician, practicing different tricks, enhancing the viewers perception of the lyrics.
Paul Fraser (director) has done an excellent good job with the editing of this music video, changing the pace of the visuals accordingly to the tempo of the song itself throughout. The first 55 or so seconds of the song consist of long extended notes on the guitar, the cuts don’t seem to be in sync with these notes exactly, but they do reflect the tempo of the song, using long takes of each shot before cutting to another.After this 55 seconds of slow tempo the song suddenly drops to a much quicker tempo, and in correlation with this the visuals also speed up dramatically. At the beginning of this change in tempo there is a 25 second instrumental, where we see someone driving along a road from their perspective, this footage has been speeded up during the editing stages, providing a very fast pace to the video. During this instrumental we also see some footage of the young prostitute, but each shot is very short and cuts on the beat of a snare drum being hit. The tempo very slightly slows down after this instrumental, and the cuts become only slightly longer. The tempo increases for every chorus and slightly drops for the verses, with the visuals reflecting these changes. For the last 26 seconds of the song the tempo returns to how it was originally at the start of the song, to a very slow tempo, with long notes, and once again the shots are long and the cuts are not quite in sync with the music.
When The Sun Goes Down was only the second single produced by the Arctic Monkeys, so obviously the music video was only the second video for one of their songs. Although their first and only single before When The Sun Goes Down was UK no.1 , the band were still reasonably un-known as individuals, people knew their previous work, but not the band themselves. So this was a good opportunity to create an image for the band and get their faces out there...An idea it seemed the band weren’t too keen on. Through the entire video we only see the band on two moments for split seconds, loading a car with their instruments. But through doing this, and choosing to really explain the lyrics of the song with their video, rather than attract attention to themselves, it has created an image for the band without involving them as such. Both the video and the song give the viewers the feeling of the band being a rough suburban band, and a sense of their raw talent, with a passion for music rather than the fame that comes with it. The record label has focused more so on promoting the single then the band with this music video.
Within the song there is an intertextual reference to the song ‘Roxanne’ sung by The Police in 1978, with the lyrics ‘And he told Roxanne to put on her red light’. The ‘red light’ part to the line referring to the famous red light district in Amsterdam, where there are many prostitutes. The words within the song sung by The Police say “Roxanne, you don’t have to put on the red light” advising the girl not to sell herself. But the lyrics in When The Sun Goes Down twists the classic line from this song and explains a man telling a girl the opposite, to be the prostitute she is. This intertextual reference is a very good way to help the audience understand the idea and meaning to the song.
Paul Fraser has done a very good job directing this video, illustrating the lyrics to the song excellently and creating the gritty and dirty vibe that the song gives off, and also in a way that the band stand for. He has created an interesting and well pieced together video that promotes the single rather than the band explaining what the Arctic Monkeys are about, the music.
The Libertines are an English rock band, formed in London, in 1997 by frontmen Carl Barat and Pete Doherty. Part of their recording career was described as the garage rock revival of that time, one of the aptly named 'The' bands and spearheading this movement in the UK, the band is centred on the song-writing partnership of Barat and Doherty. The band gained some notoriety in the early 2000s. Although their mainstream success was initially limited, their profile soon grew, culminating in a #2 single and #1 album in the UK Charts. In December 2004, their self-titled second album was voted the second best album of the year by NME magazine. Both of their full-length LPs were produced by Mick Jones, of the British punk band The Clash. Despite all of the bands fame and success, this could not resolve several issues within the band, leading to the breakup of the band. It was only this summer that the four members have reunited to play a series of shows, including main stage slots at Reading and Leeds Festivals. The director of the video was Alexander Strickland-Clarke, he is a fairly small and unknown director as there is no recognition of any previous work. The song falls into the Indie Rock genre, this genre is aimed at a fairly wide audience, although it isn’t quite mainstream. It is hard to put down in stone any set conventions to the indie rock genre, but there are a few that can be seen within this video. For example the whole video has a rough, unpolished look to it, from the way Pete and Carl look, to the camera shots used, this is done purposely to create a certain image for the band, they don’t care about people’s perceptions of them, more so the music itself. The video is both performance based and narrative based. The video shows numerous clips of the band performing the song live at a gig, throughout there are cuts between this gig and a day out with the band, which doesn’t really have any relevance to the song itself.
Some of the lyrics within the song are illustrated by the visuals on screen, and some of the lyrics are amplified. Within the first verse of the song the lines ‘Oh my friend you haven’t changed, You're looking rough and living strange’ are sung, these lyrics are illustrated by a medium shot of the camera crew walking into a shop looking rather shabby, and strangely dressed, as one of them is wearing a kilt, and Pete Doherty and Carl Barat themselves are wearing Grenadier Guards tunics. Also as the line ‘You’re looking rough and living strange’ are sung there is a close up shot of Pete in what looks to be toilets pointing at writing on the wall that says wasted hitlers youth, amplifying both the words rough and strange. Another line illustrated through the visuals was ‘You’ve cast your pearls but now you’re on the run’. The visuals on screen shows a medium shot of Pete and Carl looking at cd’s, as Pete puts a few into his tunic pocket, followed by a shifty and rough tracking shot of Pete walking out of the shop, expressing in a different sense to how it’s meant to be heard, but nevertheless ‘now you’re on the run’.
The music and the video sync together well from start to end throughout this video. At the start of the song the pace maintains a constant reasonably slow tempo and volume, shown visually by long slow cuts, including a tracking shot of Carl walking down some stairs, and a medium shot of the band just stood still for a photoshoot in an unusually quiet London street. Throughout the first 30 seconds of the song the sound slowly crescendo’s becoming louder and louder as more instruments are added, building up to what becomes a faster tempo to the song. As this tempo changes the visuals also change in sync with the music, with faster cuts showing the band performing, and close ups of the guitarists playing, panning in and out very quickly, keeping to the fast tempo of the song. Everytime the chorus is sung, these very fast cuts are used as we see the band performing live, and whenever a verse is played, we see Pete and Carl walking the streets, but with longer shots without cuts, this has a very good effect, and does well to split the narrative and performance based parts to the video.
Rough Trade (The Libertines record label) are looking to sell the single, and promote the band in a very obvious way. By creating a very lively and up-tempo music video, they are selling the band and giving them their own image as a whole. The close ups of the band performing live gives an insight to the bands energy and enthusiasm, and the stage show they perform shows the audience the vibe that Rough Trade are trying to express. There is a real emphasis on the bands musical ability within the video, giving them the ‘real raw talent’ vibe Rough Trade have tried to create. Don’t Look Back Into The Sun was only The Libertines 4th single and even though they were reasonably well known by then, they didn’t really have any set motifs, so this was an opportunity for the record label to set the tone. Throughout a long, slow paced instrumental, there are several close ups of the band walking around the streets, with close ups of each member, and shots of the entire band together, this has been done purposely to sell the artist’s, and promote them as a band together.
Alexander Strickland-Clarke overall did a good job with the video, labelling the band with an image, and also highlighting there intense and thrilling live performances. From watching the video it seems as the aim set was simply to promote the band, and this was accomplished in the video, by a plain and simple video, with nothing fancy about it, almost representing the indie rock genre as a whole, focused solely around the music itself.
The Foo Fighters are an American rock band, formed in Seattle, Washington in 1995. The band was formed by their lead singer, Dave Grohl, after the dissolution of his former band, Nirvana. A lot of there music is reminiscent of Nirvana’s music, Grohl acknowledged that Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain was a major influence on his song writing. The video I am analysing is ‘Best Of You’, released in May 2005. The director of the video was Mark Pellington, best known for his work on the video ‘Jeremy’ for Pearl Jam. The song falls into the alternative rock genre, this is a very broad genre, and has many characteristics. Best Of You shows some of these characteristics, such as the lyrics addressing a topic of social concern, depression and anger. The video is both performance based and concept based. Throughout the videos there are several cuts between the group performing the song on top of a high building, and then to shorter clips of various different things, this is the conceptual part, with the concept being based around anger, violence and depression.
The lyrics within the song are amplified by the visuals throughout the video. When the group playing the band is the focus, you can see the emotions of anger and pain on the lead singers face as he sings. The video starts with an extreme close up of the lead singer, this close up backs up my point very well, as you can see Grohl’s pain by his facial expression. Within the song are the lyrics “I was too weak to give in, too strong to loose”, as this is sung there is a quick cut to a red wall, with the word resist written on it clearly, and then another quick cut to an angry baboon, then back to the band, and then to another shot of a red wall, but this time with a heart on it, the wall is half covered by a shadow, giving it a gloomy and dark effect, this quick succession of shots exaggerates the lyrics greatly. Another example of the lyrics being exaggerated is through the line of “Has someone taken your faith?It's real, the pain you feel, You trust, you must confess”. The visuals on the screen show firstly a young girl sat cross legged in a nurse’s outfit, in a very gloomy corridor, with low key lighting, making her look almost ghost like. There is then straight away a cut to a very quick cut to a wolf growling and biting with blood on the snow beneath it’s feet, there is then a cut to another young girl, but this time the girl is smiling with sun over her shoulder, an extreme opposite of the young girl before, the two girls illustrating “ Has someone taken your faith? It’s real, the pain you feel”.
The music and the visuals sync together very well in this video. The song starts off at a slow pace for the first 50 or so seconds, and then drops into a much faster pace, with a heavier sound. This is illustrated by the visuals seamlessly, at the slow part of the song, the focus is only on the lead singer, as an extreme close up just focus’s on Grohls face and the microphone, and then as the beat drops the camera cuts away to quick shots of the group, following the pace of the music itself. Throughout the video there are cuts from the group, to short clips illustrating pain, depression and anger, these aren’t always cut to the beat, but some of them cut with the drum beat. As the song breaks down and the lyrics stop, focusing only on the instruments, there are numerous close ups of the members of the band playing there instruments.
There are a lot of close ups of the artists throughout the video, particularly the lead singer Dave Grohl, promoting him and the band throughout. The record companypaid great attention the the band itself within the video, as this is a way of selling the record in its own, as this single was part of their fifth album, they were already a highly respected and well known band, particularly front man Grohl as he was also known from previous band Nirvana, again being another selling point. A lot of previous videos from the Foo fighters are performance based, focusing on the group themselves, creating a common link for fans to acknowledge a foo video by.
There aren’t really any references to looking within this video, and no real sexualised display or sexual display of anyone throughout, but this is because of the lyrics to the song, focusing on anger and depression. The only sign of any affection within the video is a few selected shots of couples in bed together, or laying down with one another.
The video has no specific intertextual references, but there is a slight intertextual reference of genre, as in psychological thrillers. The quick cuts to animals pouncing on their prey, and young girls, and walls covered in writing, are all reminiscent of “The Butterfly Effect” and “Donnie Darko”. This is used to really exaggerate the emotions within the song, visually providing back up of the lyrics to the song.
Best Of You is a well worked video as a whole, providing great support to the song. The emotional feelings of the single itself are shown well within the video, expressing the lyrics clearly. The video promotes the artists a lot, with close ups throughout, and a lot of focus on the group, and their performance, showing the audience there style and flare.
