Sophie Boston
12.02.13
Task 1: Practise
We think magazines are popular because…
• Articles with musicians
• Example
• Example
Using examples, how far do you agree?
I do agree to an extent with these reasons, especially the first one, which I deem to be the most important. I think these articles have a massive impact upon the audience, whether it emits a positive or negative feeling. In my opinion, the articles play a major part of music magazines, and they help the audience interact with their idols and celebrities.
Examples that I would exploit are ones such as the article about Jake Bugg, from the November 2012 edition of NME. The double page spread is half taken up by a full bleed up image of the artist holding his own instrument and looking very philosophical and into his music. The bold, outstanding headline titles ‘The Times They Are A-Changing’. This is a brilliant way to grab people’s attention, as the inter-textual from Bob Dylan’s song will grab not only Jake Bugg fans but also Bob Dylan ones, especially if they think Jake Bugg is the new Bob Dylan.
The huge picture on the right shows Jake playing his own instrument, a guitar, with his eyes closed, wearing casual clothing and looking very into his music. It’s a natural, simple picture, almost looks like an album cover, and this will attract people who perhaps agree with Jake’s opinions about other artists, particularly ones coming from X-Factor, who are more ‘made up’.
This article with Jake Bugg is very professional, almost like an autobiography of his career, as it is not set out like a normal question and answer interview, which may catch older readers’ eyes. The article includes quotes from Jake himself, ‘It’s my job to keep that X-Factor s**t off the top of the charts’, but also from other people about Jake too, ‘He won’t last long if he starts dissing other performers’. This gives the article more interest, if it’s not just from Jake’s point of view. With this article, you can tell the article is intended for older generations, and is possibly more male aimed, due to all the almost arrogant opinions and the swearing. The casual, not controlled or staged picture and the way the article is written (says anything, the swearing is not blurred, has ignorant opinions and facts) tells us that the author that wrote this article is perhaps a little like Jake himself, not controlled and just tells it like it is.
In contrast to this, Top of the Pop’s December 2012’s article about Little Mix could not be more different. Once again their picture takes up all of the right hand side, but the whole article looks much less professional and serious than Jake’s. Little Mix really are the anthesis of Jake Bugg; they are perhaps a little ‘fake’, they do come from X-Factor and they are very ‘controlled.’ You can tell all this just from looking at the picture and the headline, which reads ‘How we do party!’ Even though it is inter-textual to the song by Rita Ora, it is still quite a cheesy title, unlike Jake’s one which is more serious and has more meaning, however as the world is forever changing and pop music is becoming the dominant tune, most people would recognise the inter-textual reference to Rita’s song rather than Bob’s. The picture is quite obviously staged, from all the effort of the makeup used, the costumes and the shoes (which don’t even appear to fit some of them) have evidently just been put together by a group of makeup artists and clothing specialists. The girls have probably not even been allowed to choose what their theme was, or the clothes or the props, and that is what Jake means when he says ‘The X-Factor (...) it’s fixed.’ Anyone who goes onto that show will just come out as puppet for Simon Cowell and his team, in my opinion so I do have to agree with Jake Bugg on that.
Again, unlike Bugg’s article, Little Mix’s article is a simple question and answer interview-however it isn’t even really about them or their music which, theoretically, should be seeing as they are music artists, but some people, particularly younger audiences may prefer the layout to be this way- paragraphs may just bore them. The entire article is about what they do when they go out to party; it even has a little ‘essential party kit’ which features an item from each member of the band. However, this topic may attract younger girls who love to go partying and love Little Mix, and so will buy the magazine in order to look like their idols when they go partying- the photo with the costumes will also help with this.
Little Mix’s article is not only a little cheesy, but it does exaggerate a little when it says ‘Little Mix spill all their shocking secrets’. It’s a hyperbole, the secrets that are on the page are definitely not catastrophic- ‘My false eyelash was coming off and nobody told me’ and ‘I usually change my outfit ten times’. These ‘accidents’ can happen to anyone, but perhaps that is why younger people read it, so they feel they have something in common with their idols.
Little Mix are outrageously more controlled than Jake Bugg, and maybe that’s because they are part of the whole X-Factor scheme, the answers seem very scripted, they are more commercialised and marketed, and from the picture you can it was all heavily constructed, they’re all looking at the camera, there aren’t any musical instruments, just them in outfits- if you didn’t know who they were, you probably wouldn’t even guess they were pop artists. But maybe that is how the magazine wanted to portray them, maybe other magazines had asked all the same questions about their career and Top of the Pops did not want to repeat that so they took a different approach. From looking at both these articles, it has a sense of hidden identity coming from one- Little Mix’s article. Jake Bugg’s article is almost quite arrogant and highly opinionated but that’s him being himself, he’s not hiding what he thinks, unlike Little Mix, where there almost seems to be a kind of second side to them that we don’t see.
Articles with musicians are highly important to a magazine also because they help us with the uses and gratifications:
They can help us with social interactions- not only do we feel we can have some kind of relationships with the artist, but we can work on real life relationships with people who have the same interests as us through an article.
They can also help us develop our personalities and create identities for ourselves, they can help us decide what we like and what we don’t like, they can help create us to be a more interesting person. They can motivate us to become something new, to perhaps try a new instrument or a new way of dressing.
They are a form of escapism- they also allow us to escape our normal, hectic and stressful lives, if only for a few minutes, to allow us just to turn our backs on problems and read something to distract our minds.
They help make the magazine look more appealing and interesting, especially if every week there is a new artist on the cover that has an article or interview written about them- this will engage more than one type of fans to buy it.
