Adele

Research the representation of a contrasting female artist to Rihanna

The artist which I am looking at is Adele, as I believe that she is very different to the artist Rihanna. Adele’s songs and lyrics are about love, relationships, heartbreak and life where as Rihanna’s have little meaning to it and are mostly sexualised. Adele is a simple artist with plain clothing in her videos and focuses on neutral colours such as her ‘21’ album being in all black, white and grey. This enforces her identity as purity and simplicity, contrasting to Rihanna’s bold costumes/makeup/hair and video’s focusing on colour such as S&M where its ‘dangerous’ and has bright pops of colours in the mis-en-scene. Her concerts are no exception to her rebel, weird and energetic attitude, standing on cars, moving platforms, pianos in the air, to barely clothed women’s arms rising from the stage toughing Rihanna. The attitude is the bigger the better with also contributes to her wild and bare clothing, appearing as a sexualised artist. Adele doesn’t portray this sexualised image to the media in any of her videos/appearances/interviews etc. As she always seems covered up, with still body figure hugging outfits to show off her curves, she keeps her clothing simple and practical.

Rihanna lives a busy lifestyle with multiple roles, and try’s to branch out in to various fields, almost described as an entrepreneur. Her roles range from TV and cinema (styled to rock and Battleship), her music, concerts and tours which she sells out in minutes from being such a large artist. Rihanna seems to be an artist who is very into fashion, from having her own River Island clothing line, to Armani, to a MAC cosmetics collection and being good friends with some of the largest named designers out there such as Karl Lagerfeld (Head of Chanel).

Whereas Adele sticks to music- her inspiration seems to be poetry, she wants people to focus on her voice and her main love with is music and song writing as she writes her own music unlike an artist like Rihanna:

"I've got no problem explaining what my lyrics are about," ADELE says. "I really like poetry: I'm not very good at reading it, but I love writing it. Singers like Jill Scott and Karen Dalton are amazing; proper poets."

Touring round the world keeps a busy artist like Rihanna with a hectic lifestyle even busier unlike Adele who doesn’t tour worldwide, or much at all. Her family life may have a large reason for this though as she’s a relatively new mother.

Although the artists are at a similar age; Adele as an individual is married, settled down and has a child unlike Rihanna, who focuses on partying, guys (no long term relationships other than Chris brown- which was an unstable relationship) and Rihanna is constantly in the media as has her life in the public eye, unlike Adele who keeps her life as private as possible and only reveals things through her music (in the lyrics).

How is Adele represented in music? Twitter? Adverts?

This is a print screen of Adele's Instagram. Her images are mostly of her shoulders up as she doesn’t seem to like to show her body unlike artists like Rihanna and Beyoncé:

Adele’s images represent a normal day-to-day simple life instead such as her passing her driving test, and an average person’s accomplishments like this. Her images focus on her face and not her body/outfits, this may represent her as a humble and modest artist who doesn’t ‘show off’ her wealth and success.

Rihanna's images are mostly waist up so her stomach and chest is shown. She wears a lot if makeup in comparison to Adele’s natural makeup.

A lot of skin is being shown and majority of the images are either wearing no top at all or a bra.

Beyoncé’s Instagram is very mixed, as she tries to incorporate her family into it (Jay Z and her in the top left). Her images are mostly full length of her body and you often find her with bright make-up on and in the bottom left and top right in a bra/bikini to show off her body to the public.

Twitter – Rihanna’s twitter seems very ‘monitored’ and calm in comparison to her Instagram. She has only posted up around 5 images and her tweets are mostly to publicise her projects, music , new albums and new videos being released. This gives the idea that she does not control her own twitter as it contrasts majorly to her Instagram.Adele on the other hand Adele appears in control of her twitter as she talks to her fans, shares unprofessional images of herself and her experiences (things she does, places she goes, people she meets). She also puts up role model and supportive images, such as her backing for ‘stop violence against women’ and even images of baby tigers. Her twitter is also used for artist promotion of advertisement of her albums, songs and videos. However unlike an artist like Rihanna her pictures aren’t sexualised and doesn’t solely focus on her.

Advertisement-

Adele has appeared in Magazines and on covers but all of the images found, focus on her face and not her body because it’s believed she doesn’t need to ‘show skin’ to gain attention. Her image is clean and sophisticated unlike an artist like Rihanna who constantly is showing off her body. Adele doesn’t branch out much into other work fields (however she collaborated with the latest James Bond film ‘Skyfall’ and produced a hit song for it). This means that she’s mainly advertised through music and album adverts.

Analysing both women – what key ideas about female identity in the music industry can you draw? The female identity in the music industry today is very stereotypically very sexualized. Women are made to wear small clothing to gain attention and to be seen as ‘role models’ by young girls and inspire them to be ‘famous’. Not many female artists today focus on the world and politics (not publically). They mainly focus on fame, fashion and fortune.There are many examples of these sexualized women, from Rihanna, to Beyoncé to Nicki Minaj. These women use all of these elements such as clothing, performance and attitude to define their identity to the worldCompared to artists like Adele, Celine Dion and Whitney Houston who are known for their powerful voices.

Some artists are a mix of these two and are a little reserved and cultural, such as Shakira, this isn’t very common. So this shows that the female identity in the music industry is segregated in to two sections: The sexualised famous females vs the powerful voiced independent females.

I typed in ‘Women Music Artist’s’ on google and the results show todays representation of females in the music industry.

Two of the searches out of four appeared with:

“The 100 Hottest female singers of all time”

“Miley, Rihanna, Beyoncé check out the Sexiest women in music.”

This shows that this is how women are portrayed and viewed, as an object and a product of the male gaze, which is how most r’n’b/pop artists become famous.

The music producers today create their own version of reality. This means that they take an idea e.g. 1920 burlesque girl and try and morph it into today’s society through the media and music videos. They incorporate this into costumes, songs and settings, so that an audience see’s it and wants to become a part of it. For example Burlesque was incorporated into the song and Video ‘Moulin Rouge’. The costume is skimpy, the dance moves are sexy and its full of women.

Overall I believe that the music industry today, after looking at evidence, uses women sexually through various aspects in the media and representation of them, however the minority of female artists don’t focus on this but on their voices.