Musical Industry Background and Context: Adele was given a recording contract by XL Recordings after a friend posted her demo on Myspace the same year. In 2007, she received the Brit Awards "Critics' Choice" award and won the BBC Sound of 2008 poll. Her debut album, 19, was released in 2008 to commercial and critical success. It is certified seven times platinum in the UK, and three times platinum in the US. The album contains her first song, "Hometown Glory", written when she was 16, which is based on her home suburb of West Norwood in London. An appearance she made on Saturday Night Live in late 2008 boosted her career in the US. At the 51st Grammy Awards in 2009, Adele received the awards for Best New Artist and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.
Record Labels: XL Recordings, Columbia Records, Universal Music Group.
Her music genre has remained consistent throughout her entire career and sticks to the genre of Pop music mixed with Soul.
Industry Profile: She has won many awards throughout her career, including various 'Grammys' for things such as 'Album of the Year' and 'Song of the Year' as well as 'BRIT Awards', 'AMA's' and 'Billboard Awards'.
She has a huge social media following with over 29 million followers on Twitter and 32 Million followers on Instagram.
She has been featured in other media industries such as TV for promotion of her albums and songs that are upcoming, as well as having the main theme song for Skyfall in 2012.
Genre and Conventions: Adele's early music consisted of a lot of Soul sounds with some incorporation of Pop mixed in, however now she has ventured more into Pop Music but not the conventional upbeat type. Her songs normally feature lyrics about heartbreak and are therefore more slow and heartfelt sounding compared to conventional Pop Music. In recent dates she has made more upbeat songs that have featured the Soul sound once again so mixes her styles between both of these genres frequently.
Lyrical Themes and Narratives: Music Videos.
'Hello' - At the beginning of the video, it has a movie type feel to it as it has dialogue and some acting in it to set the scene, this continues throughout the video at some points where their will be dialogue and acting in the background whilst the song is playing.
The entire video has no colour in and has a dark filter over it to make the video seem gloomy and depressing to fit in with the lyrics that about love and heartbreak which is the conventional types of songs she makes.
The video is set in an old abandoned house in the middle of the woods, which is also shown as the video goes on and is also abandoned and features an old phone box to connote her feelings of loneliness from her heartbreak and the use of the phone box links in with the lyrics of her calling the person she's in love with and him not picking up, which is why it is covered in leaves, twigs, etc and is old and broken.
At the beginning the video it is quite chilled out with close ups of Adele making tea and walking around the house but gets more dramatic as time goes on, showing flashbacks of a man which seems to be who she is singing about which starts off with happy memories then converts to bad ones to show the journey in which her relationship went in. The video seems to get more dramatic as the chorus kicks in to fit in with the change in tempo.
She is the main person featured throughout but it also features a man who is represented as her boyfriend who she has issues with. The video doesn't really explore many different groups of people, it only really explores ethnicity and gender as the male in the video is black.
There are mainly close ups of Adele during the chorus and at the beginning and very end of the video where she often gives direct address with the camera.
Overall the entire video is very atmospheric as it is very dramatic and emotional.
'Someone Like You' - This video is set outside, in the same location throughout which is around Paris, which could be an oxymoron as Paris is associated as the city of love but this song is about heartbreak and moving on from love. The camera shots are mainly close ups of her face where she often gives direct address, particularly during the chorus, but also features shots of the city to show the setting clearly.
The video is nearly all of her just walking around whilst singing the song which connotes her reflecting on her thoughts and feelings, up until the very end she is the only person featured in the video but then there is a mystery man who's face is not shown which could represent the man she is trying to move on from.
Much like the other video, this video doesn't have any colour in it and is all in a black and white dark film filter to represent the nature of the song as being gloomy and sad once again.
'Send My Love (To Your New Lover) - The video starts off as a long shot of Adele on a plain black background and starts to slowly zoom in as she sings to end up in a close up of her face where there is then an overlap of her doing different movements from different angles and perspectives.
She is the only person featured throughout the entire video and unlike the previous videos this video features lots of colour through the use of her clothing as well as post production. Also unlike her other videos that focused heavily on facial expression, this video focuses a lot of movement to create a more interesting effect to fit in with the beat of the song as this is a lot more upbeat compared to what she has done before, even though it is still about love and moving on, she makes this song seem more like its a good thing whereas its seemed sad in other songs she's done.
At the end of the video the camera zooms out to be a long shot and just one version of her again to replicate what it was like at the beginning of the video.
Audience: Adele's target audience would mainly be older women from a similar background to her as they can relate to not only her music but also her well known persona.
Her album became the best selling album in 2016 selling over 1.7 Million copies in the U.S.
Audiences all respond very well with Adele as she is perceived as a very normal, relatable character and is genuinely very talented and different to a lot of artists today.
Marketing Techniques: Album Cover.
This is the album cover to Adele's 3rd album titled '25'. The image is very similar to how she looks in the 'Hello' music video with her make up and the filter thats on both the music video and on the front cover, so there is already a direct link for the audience to see. The image is very direct with her looking straight into the camera to engage with the audience more and to seem more striking at first glance.
The fact that her name is nowhere on the album cover denotes that she is that well known from her image and that people will know who made the album just by seeing her image and not by her name.
It is very minimalistic yet striking, due to the direct address, which could connote her as a person and her music.
The audience is targeted by the extreme direct close up image of her as they will be able to see who made album straight away.
No comments:
Post a Comment