Anaylis of Chosen Artist and Genre

The Chainsmokers

The American born DJ duo consist of Andrew Taggart and Alex Pall. They each graduated from prestigious North-Eastern Universities, enjoy a good burger, and have been rejected from many of the venues they now play at and pride themselves on being regular, down-to-Earth kind of guys despite their success.

The duo had a hit in two countries with their 2014 single "#Selfie", which peaked No. 16 on the US 'Billboard Hot 100' and No. 11 on the '

UK Singles Chart". Andrew and Alex had noticed how the word selfie had become a trend and they wanted to take advantage of it. They made a demo of a song containing monologue from a female clubber about taking good selfies. Several singles such as 'Roses' and 'Don't Let Me Down' became top-ten singles on the 'Hot 100' in the USA. They released their debut EP, Bouquet, in October 2015. Their single 'Closer', featuring vocals from Halsey became their first number-one single on both the '

Billboard Hot 100' and the 'UK Singles Chart'. They signed with Disruptor Records, a joint venture label with Sony Music Entertainment by their manager Adam Alpert, in April 2015.

The thing that separates these two men from the rest is their unsettling and uncanny ability to discover and create trends.They find the parts of things that people actually care about, whatever they may be, and focus on creating and improving those parts.

Genre

When researching The Chainsmoker's genre it occurred to me that artists can often fit into many different genres due to the ever increasing list of categories and sounds being created on new, innovative technology. The Chainsmokers would fit into these genres:

Electro house - Form of house music. Electro house is characterized by a prominent bassline and/or kick drum and a tempo between 125 and 135 beats per minute.

Progressive house - Subgenre of house music. The progressive house style emerged in the early 1990s. It initially developed in the UK as a natural progression of American and European house music of the late 1980s. The word "progressive" was first used widely in the 1970s to differentiate experimental forms of rock music from mainstream styles. Such music attempted to explore alternate approaches to rock music production. Some acts also attempted to elevate the aesthetic values of rock music by incorporating features associated with classical instrumental music. This led to a style of music called progressive rock, which has been described as "the most self-consciously arty branch of rock". The same definition can be used for 'progressive house'.

Electronic dance music - (EDM) is a broad range of percussive electronic music genres produced largely for nightclubs, raves, and festivals. Produced for playback by disc jockeys (DJs), EDM is generally used in the context of a live mix, where a DJ creates a seamless selection of tracks by segueing from one recording to the next.

Before the summer break our group decided to create a music video for 'New York City'. When researching the genre for this particular song we discovered it fell into the EDM category. We then looked into related artists and found that Knife Party, Nero and Sub-Focus were all part of the EDM family. By analysing other music video from artists that are featured in the same genre as my chosen artist, The Chainsmokers, then my group can include some of the typical conventions of these videos, such as camera angles and shots. By using these conventions it will also help us point our promotional products in the right direction for our target audience as they will undoubtedly have similar fans.