Say Something

Have you ever heard a song that just broke your heart, that moved you so much you found yourself sobbing as you drive down the road?  Then you go home and look up the video and find that the video breaks your heart even more? “Say Something” by A Great Big World & Christina Aguilera is that song for me. The very first time I heard it I just sobbed – in my car at 65mph.  Not the best time to be sobbing, but it was so heartbreaking, the vocals so beautiful, that it just crushed me.  Upon seeing the video and how the artists related it to many different life situations broke my heart even more, and that is why I decided to write about it today.

This video is an amazing video.  Not just because of the subject matter and the beauty and simplicity of the song itself, but also because it was the video that almost never was.  A Great Big World recorded the song but it wasn’t released to worldwide success. In fact, it wasn’t until Christina Aguilera heard the song on the television show “So You Think You Can Dance” that the ball started rolling.  She wanted to record the song as a duet with them, would they be interested?  Per an article that appeared in Rolling Stone, the duo of course jumped at the chance.  After appearing on Christina’s show The Voice, the song and the duo were catapulted into the spotlight, and the song has gone platinum. (http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/meet-a-great-big-world-the-new-york-duo-behind-say-something-20131218)

The video captures three very different life situations that all related to the chorus line of “Say something, I’m giving up on you”.  The first, and expected, situation is a couple lying in bed, appearing to have just been in a fight, and as the video progresses she leaves the man who is lying in bed next to her.  The second situation is a little girl sitting on her bed as her parents fight.  The fight is hidden behind sheer curtains and the focus is the little girl, hiding her head and then crawling under the bed with her dog.  Finally, there is the elderly couple, the wife lying in the hospital bed and her husband cradling her, sobbing.  The second and third situations were unexpected to me and full of tragic emotion that, had I not seen the video, I never would have thought of in my mind.  It is a beautiful, simple set without a lot of fancy lighting or special effects – just people singing earnestly while life plays out around them in spotlights. By putting the focus on the subjects this way, it plays on the raw emotions of the song even more, leaving me in tears even as I write this post.

The duo of A Great Big World is made up of Ian Axel and Chad Vaccarino, and per the article in Rolling Stone, they met at New York University where they were both students studying the music business.  They didn’t have commercial success prior to this song, although they did put out an indie album and their music was noticed and played on television shows such as “One Tree Hill” per the Rolling Stone article.  Their debut album was released January 21, 2014 on Epic Records.

A Great Big World doesn’t have a large base of music to look at since they just released their first album.  The music that I’ve listened to off their album is similar to “Say Something” in the way it is simple and not overpowered by over-produced vocals and overpowering synthesized music.  As artists they seem to focus on the story of their songs, communicating with the audience in an earnest way that makes you relate to what they are singing about.  In their song “Already Home”, they again focus on a single couple, with a simple premise – the male is on the West Coast while the female is in New York and how they fly to get to each other.  The duo themselves are shown throughout simply playing and singing in a dressed down room, with nothing fancy.  While not as stark as “Say Something”, it definitely has the same intimate feel to it.

“Say Something” really is a stand-alone song, and that is what drew me to write about it.  It isn’t similar to really anything that has been released in the last year in the Pop genre, which is what it is classified as.  While there are songs that may come close to the mood of the song – sadness and loss – there aren’t any that are close enough to compare to.  They seem to have a similar mood about them as the bands One Republic, Fun!, and The Fray – groups that are able to convey emotion through songwriting and not overproduction.  But the song itself is incomparable, I can’t think of another song that has just made me sob the moment I hear it, every single time I hear it.  My goodness, even a 4-year old boy sobbed to the song (caught on video by his father!)

It is different from other works in the Pop genre because it is so very simple.  A lot of Pop music you hear on the radio is overtly sexual, talks about drinking and drugs, and is overproduced to the point that you don’t even recognize the artists when you hear them live because they don’t sound the same without all the editing.  “Say Something” stands out in a crowd of look alikes.

This video is important because it shows that simplicity can move people, that a song can create deep emotions to run through those people, and that music is still alive in the simplest forms.  I think there is a trend in our culture of wanting to get away from all the violence and sexualization of everything we are exposed to, and this song moves away from these things.  It takes a universal message – broken hearts – and makes it relatable to everyone.  People need to feel and our culture and our teenagers and young adults, who are the target audience of Pop music, hasn’t been creating much music in the last several years that leans that way. However, in the past few years there seems to be a movement in Pop music towards softer music, music that touches the soul, music that moves people.  There aren’t any stereotypes or offensive messages in this song, just a crossroads in life that people face when life isn’t shaping up to what they were hoping for.

I have a hard time finding any weaknesses with this music video.  It is so beautiful, so simple, and I think it really will stand the test of time.  The video features a mixed race couple which I think is very progressive and important to the integrity of the band and the video itself.  It also features an older couple and a young girl, spanning situations that everyone can relate to or even fear (I know I fear the day I’m lying in a hospital bed with my husband in our old age).  The video plays on the emotions of the viewer and keeps everything very stark and clean in order to let the viewer really feel what is going on.  I think this is a beautiful song and a beautiful video, I don’t believe they could have done it any better.

Seeing as A Great Big World is a very new duo on the scene, it is hard to tell if this will be their best work.  It will be interesting if they do top this, because it invokes such raw emotions it would be hard to replicate it.  This may be a downfall for them in fact – coming on to the scene with such an amazing song for their first act, how will they follow it up?  “Already Home”, while a great song, isn’t as moving as “Say Something” so it will be interesting to watch them as they grow and see what happens.  This video will definitely be memorable for a very long time, as you can just say “you know that one song that is so sad” and people know exactly what you are talking about.

Critics, while split on the whole album released by A Great Big World, seem to feel that “Say Something” is a wonderful song, masterfully done.  One reviewer, Bill Lamb, says “At a time in which pop music is lacking in emotional ballads, "Say Something" sounds just right.”  (http://top40.about.com/od/singles/fl/A-Great-Big-World-Say-Something-featuring-Christina-Aguilera.htm)  On DigitalSpy.com, Lewis Corner says “It's reassuring that every now and then a song can emerge solely on its stripped-down melody and emotive lyrics, becoming the antithesis of the club-thumping blow-outs radio currently prefers.” It seems the critics feel the same as I do – that we needed this beautiful simple ballad.

I listened to quite a bit of work by A Great Big World on YouTube.  I do plan on going out and buying this album. I asked my husband if he wanted to watch the video since he has only ever heard the song and he told me absolutely not because he was sure it was one-hundred times harder to watch than to just listen to it, because it is so heart breaking.  My teenage daughter cries with me when it comes on, every single time.  It is just that moving of a song.

A Great Big World is a new, emerging duo.  They hit it out of the ballpark with their debut release of “Say Something”.  Evoking so much emotion out of a song isn’t an easy task, one that happens rarely, especially for a new artist.  With Christina Aguilera’s help, they were able to show the world this amazing song and we are all better for it.  The video takes it a step further, exposing us to not only the raw emotions of a break-up, but also putting the song into the context of other life circumstances, such as the death of a spouse and the horror of a child living with parents who fight.  A Great Big World has a big road ahead of them to find success in the Pop world, but they are off to a great start.

Aerie Real Campaign - Just how real is it?

Time to get REAL! American Eagle uses no airbrushing – but is it a real sample of today’s girls or just a ploy for more bucks?

This new ad campaign launched by American Eagle’s line Aerie is meant to promote healthy body image in girls by no longer using super models and retouching on their photo shoots.  They are using this ad campaign to sell bras and panties to young girls, and are hoping to sell to more girls by making them feel less self-conscious about their bodies by showing real girls with real flaws. 

They launched this ad campaign with the following image on their website:

None of the subjects are familiar in the ad and I haven’t seen any of them in any other advertisements. The ad campaign began in January 2014 and as of today, they are still continuing with their promise to not retouch photographs.

I first saw the ad on their website when my teenage daughter was looking at clothes.  Then I started seeing news stories about it because in a world of retouching to the point of flawlessness and unachievable bodies, this was huge news.

The persuasive techniques I see on this advertisement are the plain-folks appeal – real girls just like you.  They are getting away from the idea of perfection and using the plain-folks appeal to get girls and young women to believe that just the regular girl down the street wears their products, so they should too. No image of perfection, just a regular girl (although the regular girls down the street in the ad campaign is still thin and doesn’t have stretch marks or cellulite showing).

Aerie also incorporates the Association Principle into their advertising campaign.  They know that girls are super models! They want you to know they love you just the way you are, no need to be perfect! Buy their panties and bras because you’ll be cute too, just the way you are.  It plays on the current trend of backlash against all the retouching that happens in women’s advertising to create a positive feeling of Aerie caring about the girls they sell to “just as they are”.  One of the photos on their site even says “There’s no such thing as a perfect beach body. The real you is sexy.”

They make very good use of the medium.  They have a hashtag (#aerieReal) to make sure they trend on Twitter.  They have information about their Aerie Real campaign all over their website.  And they made sure to make it very public about what they were doing when they first launched the campaign.

American Eagle and Aerie have done something very new and different with this ad.  They have come up with a way to continue to sell bras, panties, and swimsuits to young women while making them feel better about their own bodies.  By proclaiming they will use “real girls” and not retouch, they have approached a part of advertising that hasn’t been done before.  Even celebrities are retouched in photographs, so to come out with a campaign that forgoes the use of retouching is a first of its kind that I know of.

The target audience for this ad campaign is teenagers and young women.  They are wanting to connect with their target audience and make them feel better about themselves to get them to spend money in their store.  But the ad does include stereotypes – the girls are still fairly thin, the photos on the website – while not retouched – are definitely not of the average girl, and they stress being sexy a lot in the ads.  So while they are saying it is about being real, they are still stereotyping the typical girl as a thin, in shape, modelesque type who can look outstanding in a string bikini without any kind of retouching. I find it offensive that they stress being sexy so much since they are targeting teenagers and that they don’t use a wider variety of body types.  Put a larger girl on their, a girl with a lot of freckles, or a girl with a tummy that jiggles a bit.  Those are real girls, so it is still giving a false ideal about what a real girl is.

The ad is very strong in portraying their concern for creating healthy body images by not retouching their photographs.  They really come across as caring for girls, even going so far as having an open letter to the people who go to their website, explaining why they are no longer going to use super models or retouching.  But the weaknesses, as I’ve touched on previously, include the exclusion of girls of all sizes.  Telling an audience you are going to use real girls and then excluding girls that make up the majority of the population isn’t really using a representation of society.  It is still using models, just not making them airbrushed perfect.  Girls pick up on that. My teenager did.  While a memorable ad because it made me go “FINALLY” when I first read about it, excited that my teenager might actually have some ads she could look at and relate to the models, it is memorable also because it failed in the reprenstation of a real girl.  It does effectively connect with the target audience though.  My daughter and her friends all have talked about the ad and have gone to the website to check out the models and compared their bodies to those on Aerie’s site.  They were able to go “okay, I see a little tiny tummy, and I have a little tiny tummy, so this is cool”.  Doing a quick search on Twitter using the #aerieReal hashtag, it appears they have done an excellent job connecting with the target audience:

I wasn’t able to find an article in any of the suggested media forums, but Time.com did do an article on the campaign and felt the ad was a positive step in the right direction.  They said “In a month in which magazines photoshopping curvaceous celebs have made headlines, American Eagle’s bold move may pay off with consumers who are starting to get fed up with photo alterations.” http://time.com/1187/american-eagle-ditches-photoshop-for-new-lingerie-campaign/ Based on the ad, I will continue to check out the product line and it does compel me to shop there more than I would at say Victoria’s Secret, where airbrushing and supermodels go hand in hand.  I also would recommend Aerie over other stores because they are making an effort. They can’t break the mold yet, but they are trying to make positive steps.

My conclusions from this assignment are that it seems that advertisers are starting to realize that women aren’t all supermodels and we need to be able to relate to women more like us.  I also believe they are trying to make their clothing more appealing to teenagers who don’t have perfect bodies.  I don’t believe they are doing it out of the kindness of their hearts, I think it is a great marketing campaign that has really got people talking and has convinced girls that it is better to shop there because they really do care about them – even though the bottom line for stores will always be how much more product they can sell.  At least it is a step in the right direction.