Pop Videos Marketing An Image - Miley Cyrus

Pop Videos Marketing An Image

Pop videos really market an image. By the way they are presented to the audience, it has a huge effect on how the world responds and reacts. For this blog, I will be looking at Miley Cyrus otherwise known as Hannah Montana. She is a great example of the not only the development of music videos but also how music/pop videos are marketed. Miley Cyrus used to do a show called 'Hannah Montana'. It was a show targeted at young teenagers that displayed Miley to be living a double life with a normal school life and a famous singer life. The show has stopped and is rarely shown on TV now but it is a good example of how Miley's image has changed from the 'good friend, happy girl' image in 'Hannah Montana' to the recent letter from Sinead O'Connor warning Miley not to "let the media prostitute you".

Here is the old image that Miley portrayed in the show 'Hannah Montana':

This is a YouTube video of her performance of her opening show song. You can see the innocence of a young girl and the image shows Miley being an inspiration to younger teenage girls.

However having looked at the 'Old Miley' let us begin to examine the new one. The old one is portrayed in her music videos to be very social, kind and caring, will we be able to say the same thing for the new one? Lets find out.
Miley Cyrus has been under fire with the media recently in 2013 due to her controversial behaviour in the VMA awards. I happened to be watching it live myself as it is a hugely popular event with many famous performers. During her first performance she sang the song 'We can't stop' which has received heavy criticism from the media due to her obscure and unattractive lyrics. Lets watch the video:



In the song, I'm sure its very easy to see the overwhelming comparison between her old image and this new one. In the song lyrics, Miley makes a reference to the class A drug Ecstasy. She says "dancing with Molly". "Molly" is a hidden name for the drug. This is a new stepping stone as we are 100% sure that the old Miley would not have had these lyrics in her songs. The strange thing is she is still aiming her songs at the same fan base which is young teenage girls. With the new Miley continuing to behave in such a way, one would only assume she would lose her fan base. Her deviant behaviour continued as she performed this song at the VMA awards in such a way that would only receive negativity from the media. Miley performed the song with a parade of giant bears dancing around her and also "twerked" on Robin Thicke in his song "Blurred Lines".