Analysing our artist - Rihanna

Rihanna, a worldwide artist with, 6 Grammy Awards, 5 American Music Awards, 22 Billboard Music Awards and 2 BRIT Awards, is one of the best-selling artists of all time. Born and Bred in Barbados, Rihanna had a tough childhood with a drug addict as a father, and her parents marriage ending when she was 14. Rihanna grew up around music and started singing around the age of 7 with her biggest influences being Madonna and Bob Marley. At an older age she caught the attention of Evan Rogers, through mutual friends, and he took her to New York where she was then signed to their production company. In late 2004 her demo tape was distributed, capturing the attention of Def Jam Recording which is where her career really took off. 

 

 Since 2004, with music styles of all different genres, Rihanna has been reaching out to many different target audiences, beginning with her first biggest single ‘Pon de Replay.’ Right from the beginning Rihanna’s music videos contains sexual appeal as she was quite revealing in this video. During the video, Rihanna stands on a block and everyone else is around her suggesting she wants everyone focused on her. However she was not submissive, she was quite independent and courageous however there were hints of the male gaze being put into practise as the women were dancing separately to the men. In quite a simple video Rihanna had already established her style as being outgoing and someone who is looking to attract a wide target audience.

 

As her videos continued to progress she began to target different audience, singing all sorts of songs stretching from ballads to songs with a reggae vibe and romantic videos. In the video ‘Rude Boy’, Rihanna uses a lot of sex appeal to attract viewers however she also has an interesting cover on the video as there are bright colours and patterns and scopes where there are 3 copies of the same person. I thought this was an extremely interesting thing to do as it didn’t conform to her usual style of videos which may not have been simple but didn’t have this strength in difference.

 

With backgrounds of a fantasy world where she seems to be submissive to the males and there is a lot imagery of the mouth and lips. Also I thought use of words on screen was effective as she had never done this before and is made the reader wonder why the words were actually there. Also the use of her body blending into the black and white back ground was effective as it showed her face to stand out and made her the centre of attention.

 

 Also videos such as ‘Stay’ are quite affective as this video is quite simple and revealing at the same time and it shows her letting the audience into her privacy as just being in a bath is not something which is usually shown in a music video, but its something which is done on a daily basis. This video is also an example of the ballads that she does and with the entrance of Mikky Ekko in this song the video shows the romantic story of two who are no longer together, symbolised by them both being around the same bath but with the absence of one another.