The synthpop music genre, has today become iconic within 80's culture, with bands such as The Human League and Soft Cell receieving overwhelming success with their hits. Hurts style of play pay's homage to their predecessors from 80's, but instead of attracting mainstream audiences, in contrast Hurts' music is very Niche, which follows Kramer's theory that music shows references to many cultures and traditions. Furthermore, it also argues the Kramer's point that music is both Niche and Mainstream.
Bricolage on Tainted Love, play Gloria Hunter, Soft Cell, and Marilyn Manson, talk about how the song have been developed, and given a new meaning, it started off a song you'd expect to be played in a 60's Cafe with dancing about to it, followed by Soft Cell's version, which became the theme to students parties, followed by Manson's version, who acknowledged the previous theme, but turned his version gothic, and almost made the song feel 'dirty' with the accompanying video.
Double act, this also pay's another homage to the 80's synth pop wave, with bands such as Soft Cell, Erasure and Pet Shop, also being acknowledged as double acts.
Hurts also follow Jean Baudrillard's theory of Postmodernism, he emphasises that barriers between art and social are no longer existent, during the time of Synthpop, Marc Almond, Andy Bell and Neil Tennant for example, and were often categorised, and put into a , whereas a Synthpop band today, such as Hurts, have shut that barrier, and are not frowned upon whatsoever for their extravagant on stage antics, and personalities.
Hurts, show signs of trying to grab the attention of critics from different audiences, though, through the release of singles. Their debut album 'Happiness' had 6 singles released, which is approximately half the album.
1. Better Than Love
2. Wonderful Life
3.Stay
4. Sunday
5. Illuminated
6. Blood, Tears & Gold
Plus 'All I want for Christmas is New Years Day' (Non-album Track)
Compare this to The Horrors, who released have released 3 singles from their album 'Skying', which is less than 1/3 of the album. This shows how Hurts are incorporating into modern music life, using ITunes etc. to get extra recognition not for their albums as a whole, but rater for the singles that are released from the album, individually. In my opinion, you can argue at this idea agree's with Kramer's view that "music shows disdain for the often unquestioned value of structural unity", as they go against other bands of their genre such as The Horrors, by releasing a shed load of singles, and will be contempt at being viewed as an 'Album Band'.
On the subject of Hurts' song Wonderful Life, the bands frontman Theo Hutchcraft said "It's basically based on two extremes: the first being a man who wants to kill himself and the second being love at first sight", Hurts once again follow suit with Kramer and his opinions on music, he said music today presents mutilple meanings, which is precisily what this song does.
To add onto that Hurts' lyrics also take you in to this Hyperreal world, where the stories of your life are excessive and extreme. These of this variety are something we buy into, even though it's likely you'll only ever see something like this on 'Eastenders', or if not, a British Drama such as 'This is England'.
Hurts in a sense, and not coincidentally, are ironic, their image and music on face value has all the makings of a pop band, but from one side of the spectrum, they are the complete opposite, in the fashion that most pop bands sing about happy/fairy tale endings, whereas Hurts discuss the bad, the not so happy endings, which is just honesty in retrospective.
The pragmatics the following songs conjure up are complete opposites, although the songs could be considered to have many similarities.
Basically, Hurts are just a in depth 'pop' band, but that's just how they like it.
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