BECKY BOYFIELD

INDIE GENRE
AND INFLUENCES

INDIE GENRE
The indie genre covers a wide range of artists and media concepts. The indie genre is extremely diverse and can include the
following sub-genres; indie pop, indie alternative, indie rock and jangle pop. The term indie began to be used as a way to
describe a type of music style. This style of music became highly popular in the 2000s and began to grow from then on. The
typical lyrical content in this genre is very unique and to the heart which creates meaning to the artist. The lyrics play upon
emotions and feelings and more typically focus on the artists own problems and occurrences within their lives. Coldplay became
highly popular throughout the 2000s and are still favourably recognised and loved in the present day. Some successful
outbreaks for the band was their songs Fix You, Yellow and Paradise. All these videos had a continuous theme of disjuncture
as the Yellow and Paradise videos had no reference to their song lyrics at all. The album X&Y which features the track Fix
You was said to relate to Chris Martins doubts, fears, hopes and loves in his life. This album was partially influenced by Johnny
Cash and Kraftwerk.

The musical style of indie videos seem to look very warm in terms of lighting, which is helped due to exposure of natural light and
open spaces and this music is usually played with light acoustic or sometimes electric guitars. The lyrics in the indie genre also
usually consist of clean vocals. A typical indie song will follow two verses and two choruses, with a simple structure that the
audience can understand. The music style is very simple yet upbeat most of the time and a variety of bands can learn covers
and perform their own tracks. This then helps to make the music become very popular as it appeals to so many people. The indie
genre tries to give a reflective and emotive ideology to its audience and believes that its important to just try to fit in with
everyday people. They do not wish to be anything different from other people and want to promote the importance of just being
yourself. I would say that one of the main beliefs for the genre is for their music to come from the heart and for the music to feel
passionate and soulful. However the indie genre also wants to give a realistic outlook on life in general and remain true to its
conventions.

HOW HAVE WE REPRESENTED THIS?

We have represented this in our own music video by linking the lyrical content with the performance and narrative aspects our
video. We knew when we first began planning our video concept that we wanted to transform the words in the song into not only
a meaning and passionate performance from the artist, but also a passionate and understandable feel from the narrative. Our
song is upbeat which bands like to uphold, but it is balanced by the emotive heartache of the female actress and her characters
backstory. Which creates that ideology that would become relatable to audiences.

INFLUENCES
Most artists have been influenced by other artists of a similar
style. Robbie Williams as an example, was inspired by Kiss
when he made his Let Me Entertain You video. Robbie uses
intertextual references in the video that tributes the band. Both
Robbie and Kisss careers both focused on the rock genre and
he used face paint in his video to show his respect for the band
he loved. We were also influenced by artists in the industry at
present. We looked at The 1975s Chocolate music video, we
have looked at Kaiser Chiefs video Ruby and we have also
looked into Coldplay The Scientist. These video have inspired
us because Chocolate is a very simplistic video which plays
and focuses on the location mainly. The Kaiser Chiefs Ruby
video is also simplistic but focuses on how the world seems to
revolve around them, this concept we interpreted differently in
our video and within our narrative. Finally The Scientist video
represents a type of love story tragedy which we have
interpreted into our own way through the use of a mask and the
reference to a scar that is affecting a couples love life.