A2 Media Blog: CASE STUDY: Independent research into an aspect of the Music Industry

As a media student it's not unusual for there to be discussions about the latest music videos being posted on YouTube. However, more recently conversations have turned to the more controversial music videos by artists such as Miley Cyrus, Robin Thicke and Rhianna. This lead me to take an interest in how the success of the artist or band's song could be determined by how controversial their music video is. At present the success of a song is measured on where it placed in the weekly UK Top 40 chart; this is formulated from the number of downloads the song has had from iTunes and the number of CDs that have been purchased.

Robin Thicke's music video to 'Blurred Lines' has been reviewed in many newspapers and online forums due to its risqué content and lyrics. The original edit of the video was removed from YouTube after several flags for inappropriate imagery - the females in the video were all topless and only wore underwear and shoes. A new edit was created where the females cover themselves up but this too has received a lot of negative feedback. The advertisement for the video was banned from UK televisions before 7:30pm, however Thicke stated: "I just don't think people got it out here in those positions of power"¹. In general people have found the video to be distasteful due to the nudity of the females and the way that Thicke gropes them in an unpleasant way. What's more, controversy has been sparked to do with Marvin Gaye and the 'Blurred Lines' song. His family have attempted to sue Thicke for copyright infringement and not protecting Gaye's legacy. Adding this to the negative reviews about the video caused a lot of media attention for Thicke and 'Blurred Lines'. It could be argued that it's this mass media attention that prompted more people to watch the video and buy the track to demonstrate support for Thicke.
Interestingly, the unedited video (found here) has 43,992 views and the edited video has 206,253,720 views - a total of 206,297,712 views! This signals that the popularity of the video is high, regardless of whether the people viewing it are doing so in a negative or positive way. However, the popularity of his song is also evident in the UK Top 40 chart, the song entered the chart as a number 1 on 26/5/2013 and stayed there for five weeks².

Similarly, Miley Cyrus' music video to 'Wrecking Ball' attracted a lot of media attention within a few hours of it being posted online. In fact, the video gained 100 million views within 6 days of being uploaded. The material greatly juxtaposes Cyrus' previous Disney content made for pre-teen fans and she explains in depth the reasoning behind most of it in an interview with Complex³. Her full nudity in the music video caused controversy with many as they were shocked at such images being public - especially as Cyrus is still seen by many young girls as a role model. She was quick to counter people's negativity: "If people can take their minds off the obvious and go into their imagination a little bit and see kind of what the video really means and the way it is so vulnerable"⁴. It's clear that Cyrus intended the video to be controversial as she told Matt Lauer in an interview: "I'm kinda hoping I get a little attention otherwise my record sales might be a little sketch"⁵. Cyrus certainly got attention, sometimes the wrong sort - Sinead O'Connor wrote her an open letter detailing how she shouldn't "let the music business make a prostitute of you [Cyrus]"⁶. Of course the music video, song and Cyrus then gained more media attention and bought up the issue of sexism in the music industry.
Cyrus' music video to 'Wrecking Ball' currently stands at 278,018,003 views on YouTube. Evidently, the popularity of the video is high much like Thicke's. Her song entered the UK Top 40 as number one on 6th October 2013 and stayed there for one week. Although this is less than Thicke's five week stint her success is demonstrated in the music video where she gained far more views.

The evidence thus far suggests that controversial music videos serve the purpose of making the song more successful as both videos had millions of people watching them and the songs entered into the charts at number one. Conversely, the controversial music video might not be the only reason for the popularity of the songs; other publicity stunts, adverts and performances also caused controversy and media attention. Thicke and Cyrus performed together at the VMAs in August 2013 - a performance that was labelled as risqué by many. I think this performance interlinked with the music videos to create more media attention and therefore further drive the sales of their songs. Obviously the performance was made to appear over-sexualised and provocative because that's the image both artists were portraying in their music videos. Perhaps the record companies hope that the Effects Model (Lotz) will occur and by them performing in such a way other people will try to mimic them. This is a way of advertising their song for free as people will purchase the song in order to mimic what they did. Crucially, this imitation can be seen in the parody videos that people have made for YouTube (see left). Cyrus' music video was spoofed by the likes of Greg James (Radio One DJ) and Shane Dawson (YouTube personality). In light of this, one would say that it's the whole package that increases the success of their song as the music video initially draws people in but extra performances and publicity stunts attract wider media attention which further promotes their songs.

An older case where the controversial music video helped the song's success increase would be Madonna's 'Like a Prayer' video. The video for this on YouTube has 5,090,100 views - meagre views compared to the other two. However, the song entered the charts at number one on 22nd April 1989 and stayed there for three weeks⁷ - longer than Cyrus' song. The video has themes of religion and racism which made it a very controversial video - one of the first to stir up such discussions. Some might say the references to the Ku Klux Klan and blend of sex and religion were intentional to cause media attention and increase the song's popularity among the public. The success of Madonna's song reveals to one that this isn't a new concept, controversial music videos have been produced for years in order to increase media attention and get the song to the number one spot in the chart.

It's difficult to find a case where this theory doesn't work as most of the controversial videos have been in the media's attention for so long that they're bound to have had a profound effect on the success of the song. Therefore, one would conclude that controversial music videos do have an effect on the song's success. Although other factors contribute, the music video to the song is where the discussion starts as it's the first thing to capture the media's attention. From these videos, masses of people begin to talk about the video and song and it becomes a hot topic for days or weeks. Thus, their song is being talked about by many people, some being the figureheads of music today, which encourages people to buy their song.

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Webliography

¹ http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/24471006

² http://www.bigtop40.com/archive/?archive-page=2