Star Analysis of 'Adele'
Adele was born to a single mum in Tottenham in 1988. Adele started singing at the age of 4 and claims that the Spice Girls were a major influence to her music career and they gave her the love and passion for music. At the age of 11, Adele and her mother moved to West Norwood in South London. West Norwood is the subject for Adele's first record, "Hometown Glory", written when she was 16. After moving to South London, she became interested in R&B artists such as Aaliyah, Destiny's Child and Mary J. Blige. Adele graduated from The BRIT School for Performing Arts & Technology in Croydon in May 2006. She recorded a 3 track demo for a class project and gave it to her friend who posted it on Myspace, It was very successful and this lead to her being contacted by XL Recordings. She didn't know if they were genuine because the only record label she had heard of was Virgin Records. Adele eventually got signed by XL Recordings in September 2006. Her breakthrough song "Hometown Glory" was released in October 2007.She became the first recipient of the BRIT AwardsCritics' Choice and was named the number-one predicted breakthrough act of 2008 in an annual BBC poll of music critics, Sound of 2008.
Adele released her debut album '19' in January 2008, it entered the chart at the top spot. She named the album after the age she was when she was recording the album. It didn't stay at the top spot for long but after an appearance on 'Saturday Night Live' the album topped the iTunes charts. At the Grammy Awards in 2009, Adele won awards in the categories of Best New Artist and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. She was also nominated in the categories of Record of the Year and Song of the Year. Adele was also nominated for three Brit Awards in the categories of Best British Female, Best British Single and Best British Breakthrough Act. In 2010, Adele received a Grammy nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for 'Hometown Glory'.
Album Cover of Adele's debut album '19'.
Adele released her second studio album '21' on 24 January 2011. '21' made number 1 in 18 countries, including the United States. Up until June 2011, Adele had sold 2.5 million copies and 992,000 digital copies of 21 in the United States, making it the best-selling album in both categories in the first half of 2011. The album also hit number 1 in the UK album chart selling 208,000 copies in its first week making it the highest selling January release in the past five years. The album spent 11 consecutive weeks before being knocked off the top spot by 'The Foo Fighters- Wasting Light'. However a week later, the album regained the top spot and stayed there for a further 5 weeks. In July a single off of '21' called 'Someone Like You' set a record having become the first song to sell over a million copies in the UK this decade. In September the album sold over 3 million units and Adele became the first artist in the UK music history to hit 3 million sales of an album in one calender year.
Album Cover of Adele's second album '21'
Textual Analysis of 'Adele- Chasing Pavements'
Adele was born to a single mum in Tottenham in 1988. Adele started singing at the age of 4 and claims that the Spice Girls were a major influence to her music career and they gave her the love and passion for music. At the age of 11, Adele and her mother moved to West Norwood in South London. West Norwood is the subject for Adele's first record, "Hometown Glory", written when she was 16. After moving to South London, she became interested in R&B artists such as Aaliyah, Destiny's Child and Mary J. Blige. Adele graduated from The BRIT School for Performing Arts & Technology in Croydon in May 2006. She recorded a 3 track demo for a class project and gave it to her friend who posted it on Myspace, It was very successful and this lead to her being contacted by XL Recordings. She didn't know if they were genuine because the only record label she had heard of was Virgin Records. Adele eventually got signed by XL Recordings in September 2006. Her breakthrough song "Hometown Glory" was released in October 2007.She became the first recipient of the BRIT AwardsCritics' Choice and was named the number-one predicted breakthrough act of 2008 in an annual BBC poll of music critics, Sound of 2008.
Adele released her debut album '19' in January 2008, it entered the chart at the top spot. She named the album after the age she was when she was recording the album. It didn't stay at the top spot for long but after an appearance on 'Saturday Night Live' the album topped the iTunes charts. At the Grammy Awards in 2009, Adele won awards in the categories of Best New Artist and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. She was also nominated in the categories of Record of the Year and Song of the Year. Adele was also nominated for three Brit Awards in the categories of Best British Female, Best British Single and Best British Breakthrough Act. In 2010, Adele received a Grammy nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for 'Hometown Glory'.
Album Cover of Adele's debut album '19'.
Adele released her second studio album '21' on 24 January 2011. '21' made number 1 in 18 countries, including the United States. Up until June 2011, Adele had sold 2.5 million copies and 992,000 digital copies of 21 in the United States, making it the best-selling album in both categories in the first half of 2011. The album also hit number 1 in the UK album chart selling 208,000 copies in its first week making it the highest selling January release in the past five years. The album spent 11 consecutive weeks before being knocked off the top spot by 'The Foo Fighters- Wasting Light'. However a week later, the album regained the top spot and stayed there for a further 5 weeks. In July a single off of '21' called 'Someone Like You' set a record having become the first song to sell over a million copies in the UK this decade. In September the album sold over 3 million units and Adele became the first artist in the UK music history to hit 3 million sales of an album in one calender year.
Album Cover of Adele's second album '21'
Textual Analysis of 'Adele- Chasing Pavements'
The video that I am analysing is 'Adele- Chasing Pavements'. This is a single off of her debut album '19'. The video is directed by Matthew Cullen and set in Hyde Park in London. The song belongs to a Soul/Blues/Pop genera. The characteristics of these genera's that this video has is that it is set outside. Also the clothes worn by the characters add to the characteristics of the genera.
A re-occurring link between the lyrics and visuals are where the lyrics say 'Should I give up or should I just keep chasing pavements'. These lyrics happen in the chorus of the song so they come up a total of 6 times during the duration of the song. Most of the video is set around a strip of pavement that has the two casualties from a car accident on, every time the chorus is played and the lyrics are sung the shot cuts to a birds-eye view of the couple laid on the pavement who then perform a laying down dance routine.
Most of the song has a very slow tempo with very little background music behind the voice, this is represented on screen with the visuals being slow tempo. Movement in the shots and cutting between camera shots are slow to go along with the pace of the music. However, the tempo of the music, amount of background music and volume of the music all increase for the chorus, this is represented in the visuals with the birds eye view of a dance routine being performed by the couple laid on the pavement, this shows an increase in tempo because there only slow movements for most of the video with no performance aspects but when the music increases for the chorus the performance aspect is introduced with the dancing.
Throughout the video, there are often close ups shots when the artist singing along to the track. She does not do this for the whole video, only parts. At the 0.11 in the video is where the singing starts, this is where the first close up is shown. The close up here shows the seriousness of the lyrics and grabs the attention of the audience as soon as the music starts. You could say that the record company may be using close ups as a way of selling the track, to sexualise the artist. A lot of Adele's songs are about her being heartbroken and looking for love, this is the image of the artist that is being offered.
The artist could be believed to be on sexual display in this video due to the close ups and the amount of time the artist is on screen. For people who find the artist attractive, the use of a lot of close ups will help sell the music. However, the artist is not wearing very revealing clothing and there is not any dancing or anything else which would suggest that the artist is being sexualised. The video is based on a car crash and for a lot of the video the artist is looking at the casualties of the car crash and just watching what is happening to them. It is almost like she is narrating on the video and not playing a part in the action that is happening.
This video is partly narrative based and partly concept based, 90% narrative to 10% concept. The narrative based aspect to the video comes from the car crash, There is a couple that crash into a tree and it ends up that they are both laying on a pavement by the tree. When the chorus of the song is played the two laid on the pavement perform a little dance sequence while laying down down, at this point a birds eye view shot is shown so it looks like they are performing a normal dance stood up. They then get help from paramedics once they have gone back to their original state after the chorus is played. The concept part of the video comes from the line 'Should I give up'. The people involved in the car crash are the characters that illustrate this line. every time the line is sung, they go from a state of no movement looking very injured after they have been involved in a car crash, to moving and dancing, not giving up on each other.
To summarise the video, it is a very quiet video which allows the audience to concentrate on the music and lyrics in the song rather than having to concentrate too much on what's happening in the video. It is a simple video that is very easy to understand. The video mainly focuses on the story of the couple that are involved in the car crash, however it also has elements of lip singing in it.
The artist could be believed to be on sexual display in this video due to the close ups and the amount of time the artist is on screen. For people who find the artist attractive, the use of a lot of close ups will help sell the music. However, the artist is not wearing very revealing clothing and there is not any dancing or anything else which would suggest that the artist is being sexualised. The video is based on a car crash and for a lot of the video the artist is looking at the casualties of the car crash and just watching what is happening to them. It is almost like she is narrating on the video and not playing a part in the action that is happening.
This video is partly narrative based and partly concept based, 90% narrative to 10% concept. The narrative based aspect to the video comes from the car crash, There is a couple that crash into a tree and it ends up that they are both laying on a pavement by the tree. When the chorus of the song is played the two laid on the pavement perform a little dance sequence while laying down down, at this point a birds eye view shot is shown so it looks like they are performing a normal dance stood up. They then get help from paramedics once they have gone back to their original state after the chorus is played. The concept part of the video comes from the line 'Should I give up'. The people involved in the car crash are the characters that illustrate this line. every time the line is sung, they go from a state of no movement looking very injured after they have been involved in a car crash, to moving and dancing, not giving up on each other.
To summarise the video, it is a very quiet video which allows the audience to concentrate on the music and lyrics in the song rather than having to concentrate too much on what's happening in the video. It is a simple video that is very easy to understand. The video mainly focuses on the story of the couple that are involved in the car crash, however it also has elements of lip singing in it.
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