Insight Into Celebrity Life

AMIE:

Justin Timberlake's solo career soared in 2002 when he released his album Justified after breaking up with NSYNC. I believe that success of his first single 'Cry Me A River' is due to his the high profile break up with his girlfriend Britney Spears. After countless speculation it has only been until recently it was about her but from the model in the music video who looks the spitting image of Britney Spears raising curiosity amongst the audience. The song is clearly about heart break and the music video creates quite a strong relationship with the lyrics due to its revengeful nature as it was about him being cheated on. Although Britney wrote her own response it did seem quite as personal as Mr Timberlake's which is the reason for his outstanding success. 

Although it will be hard to use this same kind of approach in my music video as my model will not be a world famous super star I thought this piece of research was relevant in terms of looking at how artists personalize their videos in order to generate public interest and raising awareness of their new record.

RUBY:

Taylor Swift is an artist who is known to frequently write songs about her ex-boyfriends. Below are some examples with lyrics which indicate it to be about that particular boy.  

- "State of Grace" & "Red" = Jake Gyllenhaal 'twin fire signs and four blue eyes'

- "Treacherous" & "Everything Has Changed" = Connor Kennedy 'I will follow you home'

- "I Knew You Were Trouble" = Harry Styles 'you never loved me or her or anyone'

- "Holy Ground" = Joe Jonas

These links are not officially confirmed by Swift but the lyrics are clear enough to hold a good reason that the songs are about her ex-boyfriends. Its common knowledge about Swift's opinions on her choice of partners are revealed through her songs. This is a clever technique as they will be relatable to millions of girls out there which makes her music sell.

Another song that an artist wrote about someone else was Ray J who wrote a song about Kim Kardashian titled 'I Hit It First' aimed at her new boyfriend Kanye West. In the music video for the song, girls who looked very much like Kim featured; this enhanced the message. In addition the cover for the single consisted of a blurred out photo of Kim.

In response West calls Ray J "whack" and says "Tell him to call Ye when he gets to the $100-million mark, cause guess what - Ye 'hit that' first." Whilst that happened in April, it took until September for Kanye to release a diss track for Ray J titled 'Bound 2' which subsequently featured Kim topless in the music video.