Arctic Monkeys are an alternative rock band originally from
Sheffield. They have released 5 albums in the last 10 years, with their most
recent album being “AM” released on the 9th September 2013. They
gave a very simplistic theme in their albums and this clearly comes across in
their album “Suck it and See” which is a cream cover and simply has the name
written across it. Arctic Monkeys are very famous for Alex Turners incredibly poetic
lyrics, this is why their albums are quite often so simple because it allows
the title to stand out across it, which is sometimes the same name as one of
the songs on that album, this allows it to stand out. Arctic Monkeys are a lot
about performance with their 1950s look and style, with Alex Turner’s hair
flick and jelled back hairstyle and leather jacket and the bands iconic smoking
photos. A clear debate in the music industry is, is the music there as a form
of commercialisation, porn or art? Matt Hanson considered music videos to be an
art form for example he stated…
Music videos can be defined in terms of a genre of the track
and the encoding of formulaic conventions, Goodwin discussed these conventions
and came up with 6 main points that a clearly focused on in a music video. When
applied to the music video “Do I Wanna Know?” by Arctic Monkeys we can see that
there are some clear genre characteristics, for example smoking. There are
cartoon characters shown smoking in the video and rock stars conventionally are
shown smoking. Arctic Monkeys always seem to have photos and videos with them
and fags in their mouths. Also as it’s a male rock band, beautiful women are
often conventionally shown in their videos. In this music video, there are
women with big lips and big bums conventionally shown. Goodwin also discussed
the relationship between lyrics and visuals. In relation to this video the relationship
between lyrics and visuals is amplified because the song lyrics are about a man
lusting over a women and the visuals show beautiful and sexy cartoon women who
are a mans dream. Also Alex Turner sings about kissing in his lyrics “I’m sorry
to interrupt, it’s just I’m constantly on the cusp of trying to kiss you” and
there is a link because it shows the cartoons kissing quite passionately, this
is so the audience understand that these lyrics are very passionate.
Also the relationship between the music and visuals are very clearly linked,
they are illustrative because every beat there is a image, the wave bump in
time to the beat all the way through the music video. However the video could
be seen as unconventional in that the band isn’t actually present in the video,
meaning that the audience get no connection with Arctic Monkeys themselves as
no close ups of the band are shown and it’s hard to depict visual motifs. The
video employs an artistic approach to conventions in that it is in carton
rather than showing the band themselves.
Deconstructing the signifiers constructed in the digipak
enables audiences to evaluate the text in terms of representations and
ideologies. With reference to the Arctic Monkeys album ‘AM’ which shows a
simple album cover with a black background and a white wave going through the
middle, spelling out AM in the middle of the wave. Arctic Monkeys is written in
the top left hand corner, which proves who the band are, this connoted the band’s
style of simplicity as there isn’t much going on, on the album cover. (didn’t
really understand, not much to say)
The music industry now a days is a lot about making money,
stars are commodities rather than art for example Justin Bieber who portrays a
lot less talent to his ability to make the music industry money. Arctic Monkeys
however are very talented and are a clear example of how art can become a
commodity because this talent has allowed the music industry to make money.
Dyer believes that stardom and stars are constructed through subsidiary media
and that audiences construct a certain star persona. He also states that the
relationship between the music industry and audiences depend on the role of
music stars. Arctic Monkeys follow common star values that stars often embody,
Dyer recognised these common values. Their music videos highlight rebellion,
showing the band smoking, Alex Turner has a visual motif of him smoking which
links with the videos. They also show sexual magnetism with the women they
decide to cast in the music videos who are beautiful. NME wrote an article
about the release of the album, which shows pictures of the band .
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