Postmodernism/Modernism in Pop Songs

Modernism and Postmodernism although being a difficult concept has been used in many music videos.

Modernism: is defined as a modern thought, character and practice. It mostly describes the modernist movement of the arts, associated with cultural movements. Modernism took place during the 19th-20th century

Postmodernism: Although post modernism is preceded by modernism, it describes a postmodernist approach of the arts/cultural movements. Postmodernism took place in the 20th century

Pop Music videos can also be Postmodern, for example "The Darkness" and many other 

Take That-Take me Back and Other Classics Vs The Wanted - Walks like Rihanna

The clips above are all mostly outdated songs that are barely listened to anymore  but they allow The Wanted's song to be post modern as they are referred to in the more current song, in terms of the video the wanted used parts of each groups video. The wanted could have done this because they wanted to mock the persona of boy bands as these shots are very frequent  and iconic in the boy band genre, but they could of also done this as they could have admired their pieces of work.  

The Wanted-Walks Like Rihanna

A Brief History of The Pop Video

The 1940-50's was the start of the revolution of Music and this purely belonged to the domination of American acts such as Elvis Presley who was a big hit due to his style of music and sex appeal. As Elvis Presley never came to the UK British fans only saw him by touring this applied to .

Elvis Presley

Needle time refers to radio time which was created in the united kingdom by the musicians union and the Phonographic Performance Limited to control the amount of recorded music that was being transmitted by the BBC, as the BBC earned the rights to most radio channels, in an 24 hour period. These were also called Light shows, they would only play pop songs that were sung by amateur singers and not by the famous original singer, within these shows you were only allowed to play 5 hours per day. The only other way to listen to the original song was to buy the records. Then Television talk shows were introduced where these acts could show case their talent live and still be know to fans who weren't at the show through broadcasting, such as the Ed Sullivan show.

Although the Americans dominated the 40's and 50's, In the 60's The Beatles arrived and a new wave of urgency took over the world.

The 60's
The 60's was the introduction to British Rock from acts such as The Beatles, Rolling stones, Kinks. they all belonged to the swinging sixties. This was also the time when the BBC "Top of the pops" was introduced this was a way fans could see their favourite artists on the screen as long as they were number one on the charts.

Pirate Radio
Pirate radio was an illegal radio transmission, these type of radio stations are still found today,although the term pirate relates to the process being illegal it also seemed to stand for the people of these Radio stations as they would normally transmit it from the middle of the sea.Due to the  restrictions from the music union and phonographic performance limited everyone started listening to pirate radio. The plus side of pirate radios was that they played the original records from the artists rather than having someone unknown sing the song like the BBC, an example is Radio Caroline a film was made based on it in 2009 called "The Boat that Rocked".

The Beatles
The Beatles were growing more and more popular therefore they stated to grow bored and tired of touring  and being on shows, being on these shows meant that the Beatles could not be genuine as they had to mime their songs. To solve this problem The Beatles decided to produce a short film to please their fans and promote records some popular songs that were in this short film include "paperback writer" and "Rain".It took the Beatles a Afternoon to make the video and record, as a way of Marketing and distribution they posted it to multiple radio's around the world, This was the first ever music video.

Track and Lyrics

The unsigned Artist I have chosen to make a video for is Bailey Morgan, shes a very talented, and the minute I listened to her song I had multiple ideas for the video.

Bailey Morgan - Let Go



Lyrics
 I wrote these lyrics out from the song so if I have any wrong I will change them as soon as I have the lyrics from Bailey herself.

Let go of everything that’s bothering you
Let go of anything that’s bringing you down
Its not worth it
Take charge, put your hands on the steering wheel
Control the shaky hands that show how you feel
Even if you hurt him
Don’t be afraid pick up the remains of whatever’s broken
You might not be able to fix it or contain it
But that shouldn’t be your focus, your focus

Don’t look away, don’t forget your past
Your hardships your mistake you learned,
only made you stronger
Today is the day that could be your last life is unpredictable
The pain doesn’t have to go on any longer
This is just something we all have to go through
Heartbreak doesn’t have to break you
Down down down

Sit down , take your shoes off your tired feet
Rest your wearied head and get some sleep
Put your worries behind you
don’t think , let your racing mind take a break
don’t speak  about the struggles you face today
Tomorrow is brand new
I know your trying, don’t give up just yet
don’t let your problems define you
Its not worth the regret, the regret

Don’t look away, don’t forget your past
Your hardships your mistake  you learned
only made you stronger
Today is the day that could be your last  life is unpredictable
The pain doesn’t have to go on any longer
This is just something we all have to go through
Heart break doesn’t have to break you

Don’t look away, don’t forget your past
Your hardships your mistake  are what have made you stronger, Stronger
Today is the day that could be your last  life is unpredictable
The pain doesn’t have to go on any longer
This is just something we all have to go through
Heart break doesn’t have to break you

Down break you
Down break you
Break you down
Down break you down
It doesn’t have to break you down

Artist Profile

Name: Davvy/ David / Bailey Morgan

Age: 24  

Origin: Yuma Az

Years Active: 12 

Genre: Acoustic 

Music Style: Pop

Finding the right music

Finding the right music is crucial to the project, and it is quite hard to find the music genre you want as well as it being from an unsigned artist and un-copyrighted.Although it is hard to find this music there are many websites that are designed to exhibit unsigned artists and there songs.

My Sources of non-copyright music
As I have said before there are other ways to finding non-copyrighted music, there are websites that are dedicated to exhibiting unsigned artists such as www.Unsigned.Com

YouTube is also another good source of music as a lot of unsigned artists upload there music hoping for  other managers or record labels to hear there music such as Justin Bieber, also if you listen to a video with an unsigned artist YouTube normally recommends other unsigned artists.

Contacts
We have a number of ways to contact the artist depending on how they exhibit there work, if the artist has a website they would normally have contact information such as  a phone number or a email address, they can sometimes have a comment box on the website to contact the individual person, this acts as a direct route to your artist.
I contacted my artist  by writing in the comment/ contact box of http://www.songwritersexposed.com

What to say !!
When contacting the certain artist there is basic informations you will need to tell to get permission of the artist such as:

• Who you are ?
• Where you are ?
• What Course this Project is for ?
• Why you have chosen their music? 
• Tell them that you like there song?  
• Check up information for the artist ? 

Draft E-Mail

E-mails I have already sent
This was before I knew exactly what I needed to write in the E-mail.

This is a email conformation that they actually got the email I had sent 

This is the email I received soon after, ill be contacting Bailey tonight 

David's Permission

finally I messaged David got permission for two of her songs.

^ this is the first time David answered me back I was quite excited that she was answering and that we have her permission.

Non-Copyright Music

During the development of our Music video we must take into account Copyright restrictions, Copyright refers to a legal concept that gives  the creator of the product "Exclusive"Rights.

Copyright Symbol 

Why is Copyrighting important ?

Copyrighting is important as  it protects the creator of the product as no one else can use or reproduce the product without the permission of the creator, it also protects the artist/creator by preventing the loss of profit and ideas.

Problems and issues during our project

The problems that might arise from from using others music and copyright regulations are we have to get permission for the particular music therefore if we don't ask permission our videos may be pulled down from youtube which then leads to the examiner being unable to see our video on youtube which will lead to a low grade. 

Finding an unsigned artist

Finding an unsigned artist is better for our project this is because  the artist normally agrees to give you their music as the music video will allow the song to be promoted and exhibited, therefore promoting the unsigned artist.

Cases of copyright infringement in Music
Michael Bolton vs the Isley Brothers
The Isley Brothers isn’t as well known a name as Michael Bolton, but unfortunately for Mr. Bolton, they share a song with the same name and some of the same lyrics. The Isley Brothers song was released in 1966 under the name “Love is a Wonderful Thing, Michael Bolton’s song was released in 1991. 

A suit was brought against Michael Bolton by the Isley Brothers for allegedly lifting parts from their original song of the same name and in 1991 Despite Michael Bolton and the co-author of the song’s argument that there was insufficient evidence supporting the jury’s findings, the district court found in favor of the Isley Brothers and left the largest award in history for plagiarism in the music industry intact. The Isley Brothers were awarded 5.4 million dollars, the calculation based on sixty-six percent of past and future royalties. (Also taken into account was twenty-eight percent of the past and future royalties of the album Time, Love and Tenderness as Love is a Wonderful thing is contained within that album).
^(http://www.fairwagelawyers.com/most-famous-music-copyright-infringment.html)

Purpose Of a Music Promo

A music Promo video is used for certain reasons these are:

• Promotional (Artist, single, album)
• Extension of income
• Extension of outlets (Music channel, Direct DVD, and CD sales, website, Download)
• Synergy (Films, Tv programmes)
• Producer's strategies (major label, independent, artist self-produced)
• Advertisement
• It draws attention to the certain song or Artist or music genre
• Illustrates the song
• Appeals to a visual audience
• Expresses and individual's emotions
• Tells a Story
• Markets an image 
• Persuades the audience to buy the CD or Download 
• Raises the audience awareness or profile of the artist/group
• Product placement 

Marketing an Image-Two Different Artists 

Lady Gaga Vs Adele

Both of these women are iconic, but have very individualistic images.

Created with Padlet

My Favourite Music Video

It was very hard to think of  my own favourite music video as a normally don't watch the video unless the song really impresses me or if i'm really interested in the song and its lyrics as I believe that the music has enough of an effect on the listener, but I forced myself to look at the videos of my favourite songs to see whether any really impressed me, and I have a few choices:

Imagine Dragons- Radioactive

 I especially like the lyrics to this song and have put this version up because I'm going to be comparing it to a cover of the song from Lindsey Stirling and Pentatonix which I like a lot better that the official, but what I do like about this video is how imaginative and really creative it is. Although the video is very hard to interpret it catches the meaning/feeling of the lyrics, the mix of the innocent (various soft toys) and the corrupted (illegal fights) introduces a very important message also another message is that the seemingly weak can also have power and defeat the bad. Another impressive aspect is that the drums of the audio is in sync with the band members banging of the drum this also adds to the effect of the video as they are also captives in some way. In some ways I thing Imagine Dragons do portray the mood of the song but I believe this is one of there flaws because the video doesn't totally support the meaning of the song unless I have got the wrong interpretation,this is where the cover of the song from Lindsey Sterling and Petatonix has a better video. Imagine Dragons successfully carry's out the key conventions of a music video they have brief parts of the singing that shows the band members singing this leads me to believe that they are lip synching and they carry this out successfully but they well may be singing the song, the use of musical instruments that are in the song like the drum  increases the idea that they are singing

Imagine Dragons is very popular as this particular song has been used for the distribution of many other media products such as games e.g. Assassins Creed and films/ television series such as The Host (2013), therefore it has been heard by many globally,  The band Imagine Dragons belongs to the indie pop, alternative rock and pop genre. Imagine Dragons is signed by Interscope Records and KIDinaKORNER

Imagine Dragons Cover- Lindsey Stirling+ Petatonix 

There is an obvious difference between the two versions, this could be due to the second version being a mix between a cappella and instrumental but is also lip synched. The main reason I prefer this version of the song is because the video seems to relate and fit with the theme of the song better than the original, this may be purely due to interpreting the meaning of the song but I believe that the effect of the song is expressed through this video better than the other. One thing that definitely contributes is the Mis-En-Scene, the setting of the video is very interesting as it supports the idea of wreckage and corruption, as does the make up and costume design, both make the singers seem like Nomads or victims, this is a very different approach to the original, for me its simplicity works better than the originals complicated plot. Petatonix pre-recorded there cover of the song therefore the video is lip synched, but without watching behind the scenes I would have believed that they were singing, the instruments were played live in the setting but was probably covered with a layer of pre-recorded instrument music.

Lindys Stirling is a violinist, performance artist and a composer, she is well known and popular due to her attempt at Americas Got Talent, but is not globally known, she has been associated with genres such as classical, classical crossover, hip hop and electronic but lindsey is also trying out dubstep, and is unsigned. Petatonix is a a cappella group who is associated with a cappella  and electronic music, they are well known in america from a series called The Sing-Off but they are not known globally, they are signed to Madison Gate Records.








Extreme- Rest in Peace

Although this is an older band and the song was released in 1992 with older technology I think Extreme have pulled off the concept and the overall performance of the video. This music video was inspired by the film neighbours by Norman McLaren, as the video is very similar to the plot of film, Extreme was made to change it to a purely white screened video. the video is good as it compliments the song as they both support each other, the mood and image of the video is successful as whenever instruments are used you have the view of them and even if the lip synching isn't the best it doesn't matter because the energy of the video.

Extreme is a band consisting of 4 members, they are associated with Queen and Van Halen and belong to the  Heavy Metal, Hard Rock, Funk Metal and Glam Metal genre. Extreme belong to A&M label. Extreme first started to make music in 1985 and then stopped in 1996, after 8 years they re-grouped and currently are making music.

The Brief

Your task is to produce: 

• A music "promo" video
• Up to 5 minutes 
• Either working on your own or in a group up to four members 

you also need to produce:

• A "Digipak"(six panels) for its release on a CD 
• A magazine advertisement for the digipak

In addition to your "promo" video you will have to produce:

• A critical evaluation 

Welcome Post

Hello everyone,
I'm Funda Osman I'm a year 13 student at Robert Clack School.

This blog is to record all of my planning and preparation as I move forward to complete my A2 portfolio.
If I haven't finished a blog I will put in my title (TBC) which is to be continued this is to remind me that I have to finish these posts then you may see the occasional (TBW) which is To Be Written so I don't forget any main posts  from my book work

Hope everyone likes this blog
Thanks