Lyric Analysis - Miss Miller

Lyric Analysis

Introduction
The song that we have chosen for our music video is Hometown Glory by Adele, a British singer who is from the genre of soul. The purpose of analysing the lyrics to our chosen song is so I can understand the meaning behind the song and why certain words and sentences have been included. It will help me to learn a deeper understanding into why certain aspects should be used in sections of the song and why. The lyrics are included above where we have highlighted and analysed as a group adding all out shared inputs and meanings into specific words and lines. This has also helped us to break down the song into different sections and helped us to plan out other features of what we could include in these sections and how they will reflect on the song. Certain planning techniques can also now be decided for example, editing styles and what shots we are going to film as we know what they mean in deeper meaning.

Analysis
The meaning of our song tells the audience how Adele has had many ups and downs in her life, and how this has made her life struggle moving to the city and not being in her hometown anymore. She explains that she is very down and depressed although keeps her head high and puts a smile on her face to cover it up, hiding her emotions from the audience and not making it clear what she is feeling and meaning. The meanings that are represented within the lyrics are not necessarily ones you would notice straight away. Adele's lyrics go into deeper meaning which need a lot of understanding and attention to understand, which is why the audience have to create a relationship with the artist to see the hidden messages. Me and my group annotated the lyrics together, meaning we could all input our ideas and discuss them together, making sure that they make sense and connect to the song. All of our ideas as a group were really good, and meant nearly all of our lyrics were annotated with meanings and messages. As the chorus is repeated a few times throughout the song we only annotated one, as they all hold the same meaning, and meant more of our time could be spent on the other sections. The annotations we have made will help assist with my planning as it as allowed me to get a deeper understanding and plan what I am going to include in my analysis. I have found that working as a team has allowed me to understand more and get a wider meaning other than my own thoughts.

There are many conventions displayed throughout the whole lyrics, which I can see from our group analysis. The first convention I can see from analysing the lyrics is the detail that the artist goes into when describing and talking about things. An example of this is during the middle of the lyrics when Adele sings the lyrics "I love to see everybody in short skirts, shorts and shades". The detail means the audience can receive a true picture of what the artist is describing, which is conventional of the soul genre as artists go into detail within lyrics so the audience can create a relationship with them easily. The detail also shows that the artist has an interest into what she is singing about and how it represents her in a way expressing her emotions and feelings to her target audience. The lyrics also show that she is expressing a hidden meaning within the song, the words "air so thick and opaque" show that Adele is expressing that she is trapped in her own world and feeling suffocated by the air not in her hometown. This shows her story line as a whole, and these specific words show that she is going through a hard time, feeling depressed and anxious in her own world. This is very conventional of the soul genre as we typically see soul artists telling a story about there life of how they have been away from home, and cant live without being there. This shows artists insecurities. The second convention from the soul genre I can see is the relatable story line. Adele sings about her family, and this is very relatable for the audience to connect to and understand, which helps with a relationship. The artist sings about how she misses her hometown and how this has affected her life and has come to a realisation of life and how things change very quickly and easily. This has happened to may people, meaning they can understand where she is coming from and the emotions that she would be feeling singing this song. This also links into Adele's target audience of 16-30, which shows that Adele's audience have grown up with her and are at similar ages which means they would have shared the same experiences and thoughts. The lyrics "people I've met are the wonders of my world", is a use of cinematography that I feel has worked well in Adele's video and will in ours. This line portrays Adele to be explaining that people that she has met in the past she misses and made her happy. The people that have stuck by her are her closest friends, and are the wonders of her world. This lyric specifies how sad she is in this point of life and how she misses the people closest too her. This is conventional of a soul music video as soul artists talk about family and friends as a main subject of there songs as they easily influence the audience to listen and to be able to relate to the emotions being sent out. At this point of the music video we are going to show our artist Adele having a flashback, showing her having a good time with her friends, at her hometown and at local shops were they will be seen to chatting and laughing. This will show a connection between the visuals and the lyrics connecting to Goodwin's theory. Another use of cinematography within the analysis of Adele's lyrics is "missing out the cracks in the pavement". This shows that Adele has a bad run in life in the past and is now trying to miss out the bad things, and enjoy her life. The cracks in the pavement may represent bad friends or family that have not been true to her and showed her true colours. This cracks in the pavement show all the bad things that have happened to her in the past and is trying to move on from this. The analysis of the lyrics have helped me to understand the true meaning of this lyric and has helped me and my group decide what use of cinematography we are going include. The cinematography that is going to be used at this point is a high angle showing the artist walking along the streets, walking over the pavement and missing out the cracks in the pavement. This is going to link to the narrative strongly, and link with the lyrics and visuals of the song. The cracks in the pavement may also represent Adele's past, as the cracks represent bad things that have happened to her in the past, and now she is trying to walk over them rather than into them. This lyric within the song shows a clear meaning to the audience about Adele's past and how now she is trying to change and turn her life around by moving to London.

The lyrics "round my hometown" can represent an editing style. The annotation of the lyrics have lead me to understand that this specific set of lyrics Adele is talking about her hometown as well as London, almost in comparison with the two. Because of this we are going to use a panning shot as well as using fast paced editing. The panning shot will consist of a spinning shot of London on a corner, and the other will be a panning spinning shot of her hometown. These will both be sped up using the editing technique of fast paced editing, showing her hectic lifestyle and how her life has progressed and changed very quickly. These two shots will be combined together showing the Hometown shot first and then the London shot, showing how she is now in London and her happy hometown place is in the past. This editing technique is unconventional to the soul genre as it shows a fast change and difference in Adele's life, whereas in the conventional soul genre we would see the artists life changing quickly, with slow progressions and happiness, whereas Adele expresses sadness through this one line of her lyrics, which show a lot of expression and meaning. This isn't really a hidden meaning of these lyrics as it is very clear and open to the audience what Adele means as she tells a story of sadness and how she misses her hometown, so this doesn't represent any hidden meaning or messages. The second editing style that we are going to include is a black and white filter. After annotation we have found it clear to see that most of the lyrics are performance based rather than narrative, so we decided that over all of the performance stages of the music video we are going to use a black and white filter to represent specific emotions. The performance parts of the music video are very deep as they include lyrics such as "everybody taking different sides", this shows her expressing her feelings about her past and how she has seen the true colours to people. This links in with the black and white filter as is represents peoples true colours as dark and unfaithful, in connotation with the colour black. The annotation of the lyrics has helped me and my group make further and more detail decisions of editing styles that we are going to use and include. The black is going to be represented throughout the whole of the music video, and this is where me and my group got the original idea from as black is represented throughout the whole of the lyrics, meaning the lyrics and the images being shown will link together.

The annotations that me and my group have made together has helped to show a clear understanding of mise-en-scene and how each element can be used in conjunction with specific lyrics. "I love to see everybody in short skirts, shorts and shades". This lyrics links in with two of the elements of mise-en-scene. The first being the setting. The words short skirts, shorts and shades made us come to a decision about using London as a setting. Within London everybody dresses differently, from abstract clothing to work clothing. This works in favour of our setting as the lyrics will be able to be represented in people walking in the background and the types of clothing that will be able to be pictured in background of shops etc. The costume will also be able to represent this. Within the narrative concept of the music video, the London shots will show Amy to be wearing shades, linking in to what Adele loves, making her sing about it. This can represent Adele as a girly girl, loving clothing, rather than having no interest and being dark and mysterious like most female soul artists. This is then un-conventional to the soul genre as it represents Adele as having feelings on the inside, and showing them through her lyrics and using her surroundings to show them too. The next use of mise-en-scene that has a connection with the lyrics from our annotation is lighting. Our annotations has helped us to see what lighting can be used in specific areas and how it can connect to the lyrics showing mood and emotion. The lyrics "air is so thick and opaque" shows that Adele is feeling in a trapped and confided place in her life. At this point during the music video we are going to include the features of low-key lighting to help portray the trapped and low mood feeling towards the target audience and a small amount of mist of smoke in the air to show the thick and opaque feeling to the audience, so they can experience it themselves and create a relationship with the artist easier instead of trying to guess the hidden meaning behind the sentence of lyrics. Me and my groups annotations has helped to assist with the planning of the music video style. This style of music video is narrative and performance based. All of the lyrics but the chorus are narrative based, whereas the chorus is when Adele expresses her feelings and emotions to the highest point showing her performance concept to the song. There being two different styles to the song shows that the audience can clearly see this, not just through the lyrics but through the actual song. It was easy for me and my group to notice the clear difference between the two styles, showing that Adele wants her audience to create a relationship with her easily and quickly, and making lyrics easy to annotate and understand. An example of a narrative based lyric is "I ain't lost, just wondering". This shows a narrative of her past, showing she knows her way in life, and things that have happened in the past she is putting away to one side and moving on. The artist and audience relationship has a strong connection throughout most of the lyrics that have been analysed and annotated. The lyrics that I have spoken about throughout this post show that Adele has used specific lyrics to create a connection with the audience, as they show a lot of emotion or create an effective effect that shows Adele off in a positive way. A relationship between the artist and audience is very important within a music video, as it helps the audience to stay involved and engaged when watching a music video, but the lyrics themselves; if they are easy to understand or remember they are most usually enjoyed. Adele's lyrics in this soul song are easy to remember as she has a catchy chorus and her lyrics are relatable for the audience as they may have shared the same experiences and can understand where Adele is coming from. This helps with targeting an audience. Adele has done this effectively, so within our music video we are also going to try and do this. All the skills I have talked about in this post e.g. editing and cinematography will also help with the targeting Amy's audience as these skills link with the lyrics meaning a clear understanding of emotions from the audience, which is a positive for our artist. The target audience In our music video will be able to stay engaged the whole time during the music video as they will understand the link between the visuals and lyrics.

My overall audience appeal is 16-30, due to the fact that they are young and have a true understanding to the lyrics that i am using. The lyrics to hometown glory overall i feel are clear and mean that the target audience of adele can understand easily and see the meanings behind each section to which i have explained above. The music video style is narrative and performance based. The narrative style is shown from the beginning of the song and the performance styles are shown through the chorus of the song. The lyrics around the chorus show Adele going into deep meaning about her life, telling the audience how saddened she is about moving to London, and actually missing her hometown. This means the audience can create a relationship with the artist as she expresses her emotions to to her target audience and addresses them with her feelings personally. In comparison to the chorus where Adele shows her performance side as she repeats the chorus each time that it is sung, and includes the name of the title. The repetition of the chorus means its easier for her target audience to learn and remember, making the song popular and frequently listened too.

Conclusion
Overall, I feel this post has helped me elaborate on the annotations that me and my group made on the lyrics, and helped me to show a full understanding of the lyrics and how they do and don't work effectively. The annotations that have been made will help me and my group to create a story board as we have been able to separate different lyrics and annotate in full detail, developing our ideas into what could be include at these points. The storyboard will help us to picture out in different steps what images and skills we will be using in order to show the audience that they connect to the lyrics and have meaning to them. The skills we have chosen for each of the different elements shows my understanding and I can now put my input into the story board, to help with the staring of filming our music video. This lyric analysis has also helped me to understand how important timings is within a music video, and how each different camera angle and shot has to fit in with the timings of the lyrics.