Mini-Project No. 3 – OPERATING: PLAYING VS. LISTENING VS. ‘ITS OWN EROTIC’

Lyrical Imagery

For this project, I wanted to use a powerful image to convey the emotion and reality of a song by CocoRosie called Werewolf. 

This particular song carries a seriously scandalous and significant message, addressing what some people consider to be molestation and abuse, vividly describing a sleep-around deadbeat father. The artist explains how she attempts to live up and live down his name.

CocoRosie is not widely known but definitely should be. The artist incorporates psychedelic folk and weird-new-America genres. The music they create is definitely on the eerie side of music. The lyrics, in and of themselves, are very powerful. I wanted to really emphasize them.

My idea was to find an image that helped convey how I interpreted the lyrics of the song. When reading the lyrics, I imagined a young girl trapped in a lifestyle that was eerie and out of her control. I ended up finding what I considered to be the perfect photograph after nearly an hour of searching the web. I would have just taken the photograph myself, but I didn't have access to child-models. So, to the internet I went. 

The photos I chose are of young girls, apparently sad, one wearing clown makeup and the other in tears. The image of the little girl wearing clown makeup is power-packed because of the symbolism it conveys, while the other image shows raw emotion. The makeup serves as a mask while her real emotions are shown through her eyes. 

I then found a generic online photo editor (pop art studio) and used a typographic effect to use some of, what I consider to be, the most impactful and telling lyrics in the song. 

Sad Little Girl Clown, Big Daddy K, 2009 

Portrait, Audauto Araujo

"The modern location for music is not the concert hall, but the stage on which the musicians pass, in what is often a dazzling display, from one source of sound to another. It is we who are playing[.]"

-Image, Music, Text Translation by Stephen Heath, page 154

Song Lyric Video: https://youtu.be/SxEX3EzqZS4

Link to online photo editor: https://popartstudio.nl/