Me As A Consumer of Music

I usually listen to music whilst getting ready in the mornings, when walking to places, and for concentration when completing homework. I tend to access songs through the Youtube app on my phone, although I use Apple Music when I am not within range to connect to WiFi, or Spotify when using my laptop. As such, I don't often buy music in a physical form, although I have CDs of my favourite albums; this is partially to financially support the artists I like, and also for the sentimental value of owning them.

Although I listen to a wide range of musical genres, I spend the majority of my time listening to show tunes. As someone who is passionate about theatre, I connect with music that tells a story, and while I can appreciate a song for a catchy melody alone, powerful lyrics strengthen the song for me. Songs from musicals tend to be composed in very insightful ways, as their purpose is to forward a narrative, and because of this, they appeal to me on a more emotional level than other genres. This musical preference has been greatly inspired by my aforementioned love of plays, and many films I grew up watching in my childhood, particularly Disney's animated classics and straight-to-TV movies.

Genres I do not enjoy include country, as the Southern American inflection of the singers and the heavily acoustic instrumentation do not appeal to me. There are exceptions to this rule, but these songs usually hold sentimental value to me and are not songs I would particularly enjoy otherwise. I also find extremely heavy, 'screamo' metal distasteful, as it lacks an enjoyable melody, and (in my opinion) feels like cacophonous noise when taken to certain extremes.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Favourite Music Video

Image
This is my favourite music video because of its creative combination of music video conventions. For instance, it opens with an intertextual reference to the opening of a 1960s Batman cartoon (which is echoed later by a nod to Superman when the band are flying), leading into a staged performance of The Hoosiers playing their song within the narrative of kidnapping Mr A. In this way, it could be argued that it fits into three of Railton's music video genres; art, staged and narrative video. Using these references that old-school superhero fans will understand, and also portraying themselves as mischievous and chaotic in the music video, they give an impression of being very intelligent and refined in their pop culture tastes, as well as suggesting to an audience that they are edgy and playful people, rather than being overly sexual or commercialised. It is even arguable that they are expressing themselves to be childlike by playing video games and plotting creative ways to kill a ...
Read more

Key Music Video Theorists

Image
E. Ann Kaplan Key Text Rocking Around The Clock : Music Television, Post Modernism and Consumer Culture (1987) Key Points This text focussed on MTV and was published 5 years after MTV had launched. We were still 5 years away from the internet being 'born' and the world was a different place because of this. Remember that, at this time, if you wanted to watch a music video then you had to wait for it to be shown on a channel such as MTV (which not everyone had access to of course as it was a satellite channel) or one of the popular free to air music shows such as 'Top Of The Pops'.  As a consumer of music videos, you had no control over what you were shown which meant that channels like MTV could build up to 'event style' showings such as that for Michael Jackson's 'Thriller'.  Kaplan identified music videos as a post-modern form of the media. This means that they subverted of disregarded the expected conventions of film-making. For example, editin...
Read more

Applying Music Video Theory: Little Mix 'Shout Out to My Ex'

Image
In terms of mise-en-scene, Little Mix use costume to sexualise themselves in a very empowering way, rather than being objectified by the male gaze. The girls are aware of their own attractiveness, and, being the only people in the video (besides a brief male cameo later on), they are fully marketing themselves and their own sex appeal, adhering to Carlsson's theory of commercial exhibitionism. They sell themselves as being powerful (dynamic posing in the opening), attractive (smouldering at the audience as they lip-sync), sexy (dancing in little clothing) and playful (Leigh-Anne throwing popcorn into Perrie's open mouth). Because of this broad range of qualities they market themselves as, as well as their variety in race, body size, origin in the UK, et cetera, they appeal to a wide and diverse audience of people. Since this audience is mostly teenage girls, it is arguable that sex is being used as a shock factor for marketing, as Railton may argue; however, the sex is mos...
Read more