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Tuesday 5 October 2010

The Kooks Analysis

'She moves in her own way' is a song by The Kooks and is featured on their first album Inside In/Inside Out. After researching into the song I discovered the video features the band in Mexico. I went on to youtube to embed the video of 'She moves in her own way', however the 'Kooks Official' page has disabled embedding by request, therefore I have linked the video instead.

This image is of the main singer/musician Luke playing his guitar. Indie artists are usually associated with playing their acoustic instruments at local gigs and this is portrayed in this video to make the artists seem less materialistic. His natural scruffy image allows the audience to relate to the band on a more intimate level. This image also goes against Dyer's theory that a star is not the real person, it is an image created to make money. However, this instead gives the idea that the star is the person and he plays music because he enjoys it rather than to make a profit.  As a media student I know that the video was deliberately designed to make the audience believe this illustration.

This image again highlights the fact that The Kooks are doing everyday things, like eating. The video is engineered purposely to give this impression, and uses voyeurism to connect with the audience. This then makes the audience feel in a privileged position, and they then take more from the video as fans.







More info.
  • On Friday 24th of September I went on to this official page and the views for it currently stand at 1,723,048. 
  • To get an idea of who listens to The Kooks I also looked at the comments written on this particular youtube page. I went on to the commenters profiles and collected 16 ages. The ages range between 14-50, and the average is 22.
Reviews

To help me get an idea of the audience and their opinion on The Kooks I went on to google and researched in to reviews of the video 'She moves in her own way'.

Here is a link to one of the first websites I looked at -
http://www.reviewcentre.com/review206291.html

On here the song was given a 5 star rating, and said to make the reviewer want to 'dance around' because they 'love it'. This research is from a fans point of view, which suggests their involvement and loyalty to the band.

Stylus Magazine reviewed The Kooks first album Inside In/Inside Out-

It speaks of their 'one million European sales' and 'the magic of the group'. This research is useful as it emphasises The Kooks popularity.

Drowned in sound also reviewed The Kooks album Inside In/Inside Out-
http://drownedinsound.com/releases/7023/reviews/591891-

This review speaks of The Kooks cooking up 'their own sound' and writing 'great British pop songs'. Again, this research is useful as it portrays The Kooks and their music positively, implying that their genre and image is successful. This helps us gain an idea of what a certain audience prefer and expect.  

The Kooks album cover of  'Inside In/Inside Out'


I decided to look at the actual cover of the album to get a greater idea of the way the band represent themselves. From the image on the front cover you can tell immediately that The Kooks are musicians as a main focus of the image is the guitars and the base. The mise en scene of this image is used to show the band in an informal way. Their costume is casual, and in the image you can see jeans and jumpers, this is important when researching in to artist image as its clear that their image as musicians is more important than vanity. Indie artists tend to pride themselves on individuality which links to their image. I have noticed similarities between The Kooks and The Kinks, because their choice of clothing hints at the fact they have been influenced by the band as they are now wearing vintage clothes with large collar shirts and blazers. Another generic convention of indie artists is making themselves known through local gigs and playing acoustic instruments, and this is emphasised in the front cover image. In this image treatment signs have been used, the colour of the image is black and white and this affects the meaning of the image as it implies the band have a 'what you see is what you get' attitude and this is portrayed by the use of the instruments. 

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