Summer Work task 2 - R&B Genre

Chris Brown

Christopher Maurice "Chris" Brown (born May 5, 1989) is an American R&B singer, songwriter, dancer, and actor. He made his recording debut in late 2005 with the self-titled album Chris Brown at the age of 16. The album featured the hit single "Run It!", which topped the Billboard Hot 100, making Brown the first male artist to have his debut single top the chart since Montell Jordan in 1995. The album has sold over two million copies in the United States and was certified double Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. For more information about Chris Brown look at the wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Brown_(American_entertainer.



'Run It' was his first single released, throughout this video he established himself as a person and an artist as 'the next best thing' and portrays the attitude of being over confident and 'grown up' mentally and sexually considering his age of 16. The song itself it about finding the attractive woman and getting her to be 'his'; this sort of cocky persona works well to portray himself as the successful young musician, whose confidence, will most likely take him to where he can be.



The song 'Take you down' was yet another of Chris Browns successful songs over the years. In this period of his career his music had turned more soul or urban genre, making more meaningful music involving more intimate topics, for instance sex and love. Take You down was, at the time, one of the earlier songs to be very detailed towards sexuality, combined with the live performance (seen and used as his music video for the song) showed clearly that Chris Brown had become a success and a sex icon. Using his sex appeal and his melodical voice Chris Brown soon became even more famous than ever, and reached a peak in his musical career.

At this time it was worldwide that Chris Brown and fellow R&B singer Rihanna had been dating for just under 2 years when Chris Brown was reported for physically assaulting and injuring Rihanna. At this point, he lost all hope for a career in the near future. This act of assault damaged his reputation in music and in business, he resulted in being imprisoned for a short period, then to be released with a year community service and a restraining order from Rihanna. Chris Brown lost a large fan base, especially the Rihanna fans, and he started to receive a lot of negativity and abuse.

This downward spiral continued on for the next year, resulting in his album 'Graffiti' ending up at number 55 on the charts, when considering all his other albums this was considered a 'failure'. From that moment on Chris Brown began to recreate himself, trying to gain his fans back and start a whole new musical career.

In august 2010 Chris Brown recreated his image, resorting in whole body coverage of tattoos, bleach blond hair... and a supposedly purpose naked photo leakage to gain media coverage. All these changes worked, and Chris Brown was back in the media again.

2010 to Present day Chris Brown has returned to his 'Bad Boy' persona which he created back in 2005. His newest album 'F.A.M.E' was released recently this year, after his new image and his continuous media coverage though twitter and the media news he reached success again. This album cover was designed to show a new era in Chris Brown's music career; the filter of colours showing mainly only yellows, purples, blues and browns, he most likely chose to use these colours as they seem to stand out in comparison to a variety of brigh colours.

Summer Work task 2 - Boy Band

Take That

Take That are an English five-piece vocal pop group comprising Gary Barlow, Howard Donald, Jason Orange, Mark Owen and Robbie Williams. Barlow acts as the lead singer and primary songwriter.In total, the group have had 27 top 40 singles and 16 top 5 singles in the United Kingdom alone, 11 of which have reached number 1, as well as having seven number 1 albums. For factual information look on the wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Take_That.



This take that song was made and released in 1995, this song was towards the end of the band's success before they broke up. The music video for 'Never forget' features a variety of different videos and photos of the band in their younger years and some of their biggest moment in their music careers, it also shows clips of their live performances and their audiences reaction to their music. Using such clips as this portrays the success and power that their band gained over the years between 1990 and 1996. Simiarly featuring personal clips and footage of the band mates in their younger years builds the sense of pesonailsation and removes the barrier between fan and celebrity; using this they allow their fans to feel closer to the band, creating the impression that the band are connected with their fans and creating the sense that their are 'just like everyone else' and 'human'.

A newer song of theirs, after their comeback, is 'The Flood'. his song was released in 2010, as this was their first song reunited as a band it was already sought after. In this stage of their career they had an incredibly large fan base, their older fans from their original days, combined with the newer fans on the 21st century.

Summer Work task 2 - Soul/jazz

Amy Winehouse is and was clearly one of the most media covered artist this century; she began her controversial music career as a young woman in 2003, releasing her album 'Frank'. As she was just emerging the media she became critically successful and won a prestige music award; then in 2006 she took a turn. As her music career rocketed, so did her life. She began taking drugs and drinking often, so often that she became very popular with the papparazzi and the media; they were obsessed with her.



The hit single 'rehab' was extremely successful, currently with 14 million veiews on youtube; she even won 5 grammy awards and a record for "First British female to have 5 wins". The song rehab reflects her drug and alchocolic elements in life, and how it was getting to the stage where she was risking her life and health.



The song 'Back to Black' was yet another famous song of hers; depicting the love/hate  relationship that she ahnd then husband 'Blake'. The music video has black and white filter over the video; making the words 'black, in the title of the song even more evident; also creating the tone and symbol of emotion representing her 'black'' and negative moods.

The content of the video consists on a storyline of a woman going to a fumeral; her emotions and her moods. The words closely relate  to what happens in the video, 'I died a hundred times' and then semantic link with a funeral, death, and graveyards. Similarly the words 'Goodbye' and 'I go back to...' have the semantic link to the music.