Indie stands for 'independent', this genre of music usually consists of musicians who are not in it for the big label, but are there to make good music. There are many different types of indie music within the genre, for example, Indie Dance, Indie Electronic, Indie Pop, Indie Rock, Indie Hip Hop and several more. The type of Indie music that my team and I will be using as our genre is Indie Pop. Indie Pop is a genre of alternative rock music, this genre of music originated in the United Kingdom in the mid 1980's. It is a genre chaacterised by pop music conventions and structure accompanied by a melodic, lighthearted sound. Artists generally use typical instruments such as guitar, drums, bass and vocals.
Indie Pop Music Example Artists
Lana Del Rey is an American Singer Songwriter. Her sound has been primarily linked to Indie Pop. Her biggest hits include 'Summertime Sadness' and 'Born to Die'. Her music has been widely recognised for its cinematic sound and its references to various aspects of pop culture, particularly that of the 1950's and 60's. Amongst her musical influences, Lana Del Rey cites several contemporary artists such as Elvis Presley, Eminem, Frank Sinatra and Amy Winehouse.
'Summertime Sadness' is a song that tells the love story about two women. As summer comes to an end, the two women have drifted apart emotionally from each other as the days of their relationship are long gone. In terms of non-performance and narrative, this music video is virtually all narrative and there is very little performance from the main artist.
Indie music videos are practically the most narrative based of any music genre when it comes to music videos. The better part of the music videos consists of the narrative parts of the video matching with the story being told by the lyrics. As opposed to other music genres such as Pop and Rock music, indie music is generally more low key and relaxed and there is more emphasis placed on the actual music and the lyrics and the videos for indie music reflect this.
Lorde is a New Zealand singer-songwriter. Her musical genre has been linked to Indie Pop and Lorde has expressed her indifference towards modern-day's culture through the use of her music. Musically, Lorde is inspired by Lana Del Rey, she grew up listening to American Soul Musicians such as Etta James and Otis Redding. Lorde's vocals and music videos are seen as being intriguing and powerful showing a contrast between being dynamic, smoky and restrained to being sweet, sultry and sour.
The video was inspired by Lorde's dream of teenagers in their own world, a world with hierarchies and initiations where the boy who has second in command has acne and so does the Queen. This video has roughly 65% narrative and 35% performance by the main artist.
There are several similarities between these two Indie Pop genre music videos. By looking at the two screen shots, the one on the right being from Lana Del Rey's video to 'Summertime Sadness' and the left being from Lorde's video to 'Team', we can see that one element of iconography within the indie pop music genre is the theme of darkness. By looking at the two different images above, we can see that the colours in Indie music videos appear to be rather plain. This is due to there being no extravagance when referring to the Indie genre, for example, Indie music videos are usually set in familiar locations and environments as oppose to Rock and Pop music genres. This reflects the general laid back attitude of the Indie genre as the genre relies more on the emotion and deeper meanings of the song emphasising the lyrics and song. Another Indie music video that uses dark colours like the above two examples is the video to 'Everything is Embarrassing' by Sky Ferreira. This shows that the element of dark, dull colours is a common visual image used in Indie music videos.
The screen grabs to the left are of several different close up shots used in the two music videos 'Summertime Sadness' and 'Team'. These different close up shots have been used to create emphasis on the artist and the narrative elements of the music videos. For these two particular music videos, I think the close up shots have been used to draw our attention to the emotion on the characters' faces. In the screen grabs the emotions that we can see emphasie distress, dismay and sadness. However, close ups are not always used to just show emotion, they are also used to reflect the words of the song, in Indie Pop music videos, the lyrics are usually expressed through the actions in the narrative parts of the music videos. Noticeably, we are eye level with all of these close up shots which can make us feel more involved with the video and the emotions that the lyrics are expressing.
Iconography is the representation of something that contains certain conventions that we associate with different genres. The Indie genre is almost a hybrid of pop and rock music in terms of the appearance and the music that the musicians play. The music that we hear in the Indie genre can differ, for example, some artists have a conserved manner, for example Indie Pop, whereas others can be fairly loud and wild, for example Indie Rock.
Ellie Goulding is associated with the Indie Pop music genre, she is an English singer-songwriter.
Bastille are an English Rock Band who are also associated with the Indie Pop music genre.
By looking over all of the example Indie Pop music videos 'Summertime Sadness', 'Team,' 'Figure Eight' and 'Pompeii', we can see that within all of these videos there are several very quick transitions, slow transitions and many cut aways from the main artist to the narrative scenes. Transitions are the process of cutting from one scene to another, for example, a change in the camera angle. The transitions that most commonly occur in Indie Pop music videos are usually straight cuts, this is where they jump directly from one scene to anoter without any fades to black or cross dissolves etc. However, some Indie Pop music videos use many cross disolve transitions in the narrative parts of the music videos to illustrate the passage of time.
When the music picks up pace, the transitions speed up in direct proportion to the music. This will mean an increase in the varied camera angles and shot types, these parts of the video will be faster than the rest which will contribute to the emphasis of the dramatic narrative scenes.