ER: Music Video Theory

Rihanna – “We Found Love” – “Talk That Talk” (2011)

“Music videos are simply a tool for promoting an artist.” With reference to a promotional campaign, how far do you agree with this statement?

I have chosen Rihanna’s music video for “We Found Love” from her sixth album “Talk That Talk” released in 2011 and its promotional campaign. I found Rihanna’s campaign and overall meta-narrative interesting because she relies a lot on her sexualised reputation and the multiple times she has reinvented her image. Her genre ranges from reggae pop at the beginning of her career to pop hip hop and dance later on. This gives her the opportunity to appeal to multiple audiences with her variety of genres. It is interesting as to whether Rihanna’s music video is considered commercial, porn or art. Although a lot of her work is quite commercialised the majority is heavily sexualised, especially “We Found Love”. Rihanna’s music videos aren’t too conceptual and are quite straight forward showing that she appears to avoid the art category and follows the “sex sells” motto.

Music videos can be defined in terms of genre of the track and the encoding of formulaic conventions as said by Goodwin (Dancing in the Distraction Factory, 1992). Goodwin talked about genre characteristics and how music videos are defined by their genre, for example we can see that as the song belongs to the pop/ dance genre, it involves a stereotypical view of young people drinking, doing drugs and running wild in the night. It also focuses around a relationship which is also very conventional of the pop genre. Goodwin discussed the relationship between lyrics and visuals. In relation to “We Found Love” it is clear that the music, lyrics and visuals have an amplified relationship. For example the chorus line is “We found love in a hopeless place” and the whole music video shows Rihanna and her boyfriend to be living in a sink estate, well known for economic and social deprivation and the correlation between sink estates and high crime. This could be described as a “hopeless place”. This amplified relationship also applies to the sound as well as the lyrics for example when the beat speeds up, so does the cutting rate reinforcing the defined relationship between the aural sound and the visual images. Goodwin also discussed the use of voyeurism and fetishism in music videos, which is heavily used in “We Found Love” as the camera follows all of Rihanna’s actions while she wears provocative clothing. The video can be seen as unconventional in that the pop genre normally glorifies reality whereas “We Found Love” shows the gloomy reality of life.

Deconstructing the signifiers constructed in the digipak enables audiences to evaluate the text in terms of representation and ideologies. With reference to Rihanna’s “Talk That Talk” album, her signature “R” is used instead of her name, signifying a level of fame so high that everyone will know exactly who this album is by without a name. “Talk That Talk” is written in a small, standard font, so as not to take away from the main feature of the cover, Rihanna’s face, one of her biggest selling points. It shows her to be staring straight into the camera, connecting with the audience, with smoke floating out of her mouth. This creates debate about whether the smoke is from cigarettes or drugs, both have connotations to the reckless youth stereotype where self-damaging acts are considered exciting. The same applies to a tattoo that is on show. The picture has Rihanna’s shoulders and the top of her chest in show, subtly suggesting that she is naked creating sexual connotations about the album cover.

The advertisements also include visual signifiers. They are in black and white to correspond with the album cover. The first appears to be of Rihanna backstage at a show, surrounded by people, all made up, “living the high life”. It is a glorified image of performing. It depicts Rihanna looking straight into the camera with a seductive look on her face creating a connection with the audience making them feel like she is looking at them personally and individually. The second one shows Rihanna to be lying on a luxurious bed, pouting, both of which have sexual connotations. Advertisement is key in selling her products and all it takes for a successful Rihanna advert is herself to be on it as she uses her image to sell instead of art.

“We Found Love” belongs to mainly the pop genre and Rihanna is typically represented in both a voyeuristic and fetishistic way, as the camera follows what she does, a lot of it being sexual. Dyer’s theory on the two paradoxes is very clear here. Rihanna is shown to be simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary. The location in the video is very ordinary being in a sink estate and the whole narrative of the video is typical of an ordinary couple’s ups and downs. But there are extraordinary features like when a montage is used of various images like pupils dilating and the ash of a cigarette in rainbow colours, as well as when Rihanna throws up some ribbon instead of vomit. She is also simultaneously present and absent because although she is almost in every shot, she barely looks into the camera through the whole video, creating a distant expression and making the audiences desperate to know what is going through her head. This causes incoherence, leading the audience to want to complete their image by consuming their media. The same applies to her promotional campaign where there is minimal amount of writing and just focuses on Rihanna in a certain location with no explanation, pushing audiences to strive to know more and doing this by consuming more of her media.

It is evident that after full analysis using various theories, a record label creates an image around the artist depending on what genre they a part of. For popular music, I agree that the promotional campaign uses soft porn and very commercialised features to sell and achieve continuous consumption. However, indie record labels use music videos and promotional campaigns more as an art form and avoid using the artist’s image to sell. TO conclude I strongly agree that music videos are simply a tool for promoting an artist because even indie labels use it to increase recognition of an artist to gain popularity.