My chosen genre of music is Britpop, and the four bands I will be analysing from this are Suede, Pulp, Space, and Oasis. The other 4 bands I will be analysing are from a similar musical background though not quite Britpop and will be Keane, Stereophonics, Radiohead, and Bloc Party.
Space are an English band formed in Liverpool in 1992 behind lead singer Tommy Scott, originally performing as a trio. The band still continues to this day, now with a different set of members, bar Tommy Scott who remained the only consistent one. The band also renamed in 2011 to 'The Drellas'. They are recognised in the music industry, particularly in Britpop, for their songs Female of the Species, Me and You Versus the World and The Ballad of Tom Jones.
The music video of theirs that I will be analysing is Neighbourhood from their most successful album Spiders, released under Gut Records, a label with other bands such as Tears for Fears, The Egg and Sparks. The band is noted for their dark humoured and witty lyrics that fit in with the Britpop genre and the humour that would be taken well by their target audience. The band has a total of 7 albums, with their most recent one being released in 2021, and the band has now been going for over 30 years.
Neighbourhood was released in 1996, during the bands peak era when Britpop was dominating the music industry. The lyrics were partially inspired by Tommy Scotts upbringing, living in a council house and shows the band's humour through warped personalities being represented throughout. This fits the genre of music as the lead singer grew up in a position relatable to the majority of a British audience - under working-class parents and being opposed to conservatives, a view especially popular in Liverpool.
The beginning opens with a shot of a row of houses that would be a familiar sight to a British audience and likely similar to most of the houses that viewers of the video live in, if the song is correctly reaching its target audience. It is the same as the houses Tommy Scott was described to be living in growing up and shows that this is a recount of his own personal experiences. There are also shots of the band performing both isolated and next to the houses being described in the lyrics. The video is both a narrative and a performance.
The opening lyric begins 'In number 69 there lives a transvestite.' The song throughout gives different address numbers and describes those living there, and the video presents quite a stereotyped look of a transvestite considering the year the video was released and this was a term more stereotyped. The people living in each place are shown to be extremely different - there is vicar that doubles as a serial killer living at 666, people living a life of crime in 999, a 'big butch queen' in number 16 and people struggling to pay rent in 110. Though these depictions are quite wacky they are not completely unrealistic and they show all of the different backgrounds that these people come from.
The song ends saying 'They want to knock us down cause they think we're scum.' This shows the government's view of those lower class and not caring for them, but the song says how they will all come together as a community despite all of their different backgrounds. This is quite a universal thing for lower class British people - there may be alot they disagree with but when it comes to disagreeing with the government they can all come and say it together. The video shows the performance element here, and the band does not seem to be in a fancy location of any sort and it looks like it could simply be someones garage. the quality for the recording is also low and nothing special showing the lower class element by not making it on a big budget.
The band began touring with this new album as a way to reach their target audience and did little pop-up shows, and secret gigs, for their more dedicated fans to come to. In doing these shows they could reach their fans and bring in new fans who just happened to see a poster about the concert and decided to go, considering the pricing was not particularly high.
The band also released a version of their song 'The Ballad of Tom Jones' alongside Catatonia, a female band that were also successful in the music industry for their addition to the Britpop era. In doing this, they brought more fans for themselves over from Catatonia's fanbase. The song was also initially a big success for the band so remastering it and adding another band to the mix would only increase their success and add more listens for them.
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