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Sally Hughes

Bowling For Soup - Music Marketing

Bowling for Soup is an American rock band originally formed in Texas in 1994.



"1985" is a 2004 song that was written and recorded by SR-71. It was also covered by American rock band Bowling for Soup, whose version reached number 23 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was featured on the band's album A Hangover You Don't Deserve.


The song is about a middle-aged woman who seems to be still living in the past, reliving her glory years of when she was a teenager in 1985. We can assume from lyrics such as ‘Her dreams went out the door’ and ‘what happened to her plan?’ that she once had big dreams but now spends her time stuck in the past immersing herself in '80s pop culture. All of this is set in the backdrop of suburban American which most likely links to her rather boring and bland life.


The overriding theme for the video links to the strong feelings of nostalgia and, due to this, the video can be described as having postmodern features. One example of this is the different intertextual references to a wide multitude of 80’s pop icons.


At the start of the video, we can see the lead singer Jaret Reddick performing in a shirt and tie while the rest of the band are dressed in black dresses and high-heels with makeup on their faces. This is not only a parody of Robert Palmer’s ‘Addicted to Love’ music video but also could be seen as reminiscent of when it was rather common for male bands to dress femininely.


Later on, we can see a parody of the video for ‘Faith’ by George Micheal as well as the repeated mention of the classic 80s rock band Whitesnake with the video actually finishing with the woman ‘shaking her ass on [Witesnake’s] car’. Other music icons referenced in the song and its video are Madonna, U2, Blondie, MTV, Bruce Springsteen, Ozzy Osbourne, and Van Halen. Movies from the '80s are also mentioned with the likes of The Breakfast Club, St. Elmo's Fire and Pretty In Pink.



 

Their website is rather standard (and some could argue boring - especially for a rock band) with its home page only including a few different advertisement boards and their tour dates underneath. Right at the bottom of the page, there are social media buttons alongside two separate buttons advertising both their UK and USA stores (which can also be seen in the tab bar at the top). It's also interesting to note that the website seems to give no information about the band themselves as that is often typical of most band websites.

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