Analysis of Gerri Halliwell ‘It’s Raining Men’ Music Video

Background of the Artist• Geraldine Estelle ‘Geri Halliwell’ was

born in 1972 and is currently a British songwriter, actress, singer and clothes designer.

• She first came to fame as part of the Spice Girls in 1994 as ‘Ginger Spice’. However in 1998 she went into depression and left the group due to differences with them.

• But she bounced back with a solo career that was highly successful and even joined the Spice Girls in a reunion tour. She is currently a Judge on ‘The X Factor’.

Background of the Song• The purpose of the song is to promote

the film ‘Bridget Jones’s Diary’ as the song features as part of the soundtrack to that film. The purpose of the video is to promote both the song and the film whilst trying to sell Halliwell’s new look and recovery after depression.

• The song is a cover of a 1982 song of the same name by ‘The Weather Girls’. Both are pop songs of there era. The Halliwell version was released in 2001 and is not the only cover of the song. Carol Jiavani, Young Diva’s and the Nolans have also done covers of the song.

How the song represents Genre• The stereotypical representation of a

pop genre, is dancing, performance, over crowdedness, bright colours and all around positive feel.

• The music video contains dancing and the performance element which makes it feel more like a pop song. The most common colours used are reds and yellows, again all really bright which helps to strengthen and emphasise the image of a pop song. The video also contains a lot of people creating that feeling of over-crowdedness.

• However there is some juxtaposition to this. At the beginning of the video, Halliwell is performing a ballet routine, uncommon of the pop music genre and this helps create more sophistication, elegance and in a way a sense of posh to the video and the song which helps it to appeal to a more higher class audience. This does however soon into the real song and the pop genre conventions appear which removes the sophistication and elegance because the bright colours and overly happy dancing do not connote elegance or intelligence.

The visuals and lyrics• The visuals amplify the lyrics. This

is shown best by the most common lyric in the song ‘It’s raining men’. To amplify this the video has taken the raining element and actually made it rain and the shots do include men. However the rain is not men, the men are dance performers with the artist. This both follows and goes against the lyrics. In most other circumstances there is no relation between the lyrics or the visuals, they are completely different.

The visuals and music

• The way the visuals convey the music is through the use of editing. This is best shown by the pace of the edit. At the start during the ballet scene it’s really slow paced, matching the music, but as the music increases in pace so does the cuts of the shots, and in the big chorus at the end it’s very fast paced. The pace increases as the music increases.

Selling and representing the artist• The music video creates three different

representations of the same artist.• The first is created in the ballet scene.

The fact she is performing ballet makes her seem sophisticated and controlled because these are general connotations of what ballet is. However, she is being watched through the male gaze in the form of the judge (Mulvey’s male gaze) so there is still a sense of sexuality and men lusting over her even in this sophisticated representation which creates the impression she is not as innocent as she seems.

• The second representation is based on the Uses and Gratifications theory, the part about relating to the artist. This is created through Halliwell lying in her house with a dog which helps make her look like a much more, down to earth sort of person and therefore the audience will find it easier to relate to her and would want to consume her media more.

• However what she is wearing still creates this voyeuristic message from the previous representation.

• The third representation is the general pop singing one because of the bright colours, performance, lip syncing and heavy dancing with her environment being a location.

Intertextuality

• The music video to Jenifer Lopez’s I’m Glad features a homage to the ballet scene from this video. There also shots of Jenifer Lopez and her dog.

Voyeurism

• As already depicted voyeurism is used in the video to help sell it to a male audience as this type of song and song title may not make them want to watch it, so by making the artist not have any clothes, more males would want to watch the video thus making Halliwell a sex object. This is common of most music videos of this genre to achieve the same common goal.