ARTIST RESEARCH - Media Coverage/Appearances

Brett Anderson's own website.

Brett Anderson ranking the albums.

Music Press Archive.

CRITICAL KUDOS
Very positive to Dog Man Star:

• http://flavorwire.com/482589/suedes-dog-man-star-at-20-a-messy-ill-advised-tribute-to-a-messy-ill-advised-masterpiece

REACTIONS TO THEIR COMEBACK

From this Independent.ie entry:

There is some­thing won­der­fully spe­cial about see­ing a white hot young band in the first flush of suc­cess. When Suede made their Ir­ish con­cert de­but on March 27, 1993, they were the most talked about new Bri­tish band since the Stone Roses, and those who at­tended the Tivoli, on Dublin’s Fran­cis Street, that night are un­likely to have for­got­ten the manic in­ten­sity of the then quar­tet’s per­for­mance.
It’s worth re­mem­ber­ing just how hyped Suede were in 1992 and 1993. On the strength of just three sin­gles, they were dubbed “the best band in Bri­tain” by Melody Maker, and they had ap­peared on the cover of 20 mag­a­zines be­fore they had re­leased their de­but al­bum. That self-ti­tled ef­fort, in­ci­den­tally, was re­leased the day be­fore the Tivoli gig and it was justly praised as a mile­stone re­lease.
In fact, Suede would prove to be the fastest sell­ing al­bum in the UK charts since Frankie Goes to Hol­ly­wood’s Wel­come to the Plea­sure­dome al­most a decade be­fore. The strength of those early sin­gles helped whip up a me­dia frenzy, but credit must also go to their pub­li­cist, John Best, who pulled ev­ery string in the PR book to en­sure that Suede were the band on ev­ery­one’s lips. Best also worked with The Cran­ber­ries, then en­joy­ing con­sid­er­able pop­u­lar­ity and what would prove to be short-lived ac­claim for their de­but Ev­ery­body Else Is Do­ing It, So Why Can’t We?
Much of the bril­liance of Suede lay in the ten­sion be­tween the hy­per-lit­er­ate front­man Brett An­der­son and the mar­vel­lous gui­tarist, Bernard But­ler. Com­par­isons with Mor­ris­sey and Marr were lazy, per­haps, but not com­pletely with­out merit. There was a real sense at the time that both young men were push­ing each other to be as good as they could be.And while grunge was in the as­cen­dancy glob­ally, there was some­thing unashamedly English — and Lon­don-cen­tric — about An­der­son’s pre­oc­cu­pa­tions. On the month their de­but al­bum was re­leased, the snake-hipped front­man was on a cover of Se­lect mag­a­zine with a union flag pro­vid­ing the back­drop and a sub-head­line scream­ing “Yanks go home!”It’s some­times cited as the mo­ment Brit­pop was born and al­though Suede didn’t em­body the move­ment in the pub­lic mind in quite the same way Blur and Oa­sis would, they played a fun­da­men­tal part. That was made clear in John Har­ris’s ab­sorb­ing book on Brit­pop, The Last Party — an ac­count that doc­u­mented in fan­tas­tic de­tail the break­down be­tween An­der­son and But­ler.Even in the course of mak­ing Suede, the pair had been at log­ger­heads, with An­der­son said to be an­noyed that pro­ducer Ed Buller ap­peared to see But­ler as the key mem­ber of the group. And there was ac­ri­mony dur­ing the mak­ing of se­cond al­bum Dog Man Star — a work that was cere­bral, overblown, thrilling and mad­den­ing, of­ten in the course of the same song. But­ler de­parted be­fore the al­bum had been com­pleted, for­ever rob­bing the band of the ex­u­ber­ant fris­son that had marked them out from the pack.Even in the course of mak­ing Suede, the pair had been at log­ger­heads, with An­der­son said to be an­noyed that pro­ducer Ed Buller ap­peared to see But­ler as the key mem­ber of the group. And there was ac­ri­mony dur­ing the mak­ing of se­cond al­bum Dog Man Star — a work that was cere­bral, overblown, thrilling and mad­den­ing, of­ten in the course of the same song. But­ler de­parted be­fore the al­bum had been com­pleted, for­ever rob­bing the band of the ex­u­ber­ant fris­son that had marked them out from the pack.And yet, in the then 17-year-old Richard Oakes, An­der­son found a gifted re­place­ment for But­ler, but the young ax­e­man just didn’t have But­ler’s on-stage pres­ence. Still, Oakes was an im­por­tant cog on Com­ing Up, the band’s third, and most com­mer­cial, al­bum to date — and he plays a big part in the suc­cess of the lat­est al­bum, Night Thoughts, which was re­leased last month.And yet, in the then 17-year-old Richard Oakes, An­der­son found a gifted re­place­ment for But­ler, but the young ax­e­man just didn’t have But­ler’s on-stage pres­ence. Still, Oakes was an im­por­tant cog on Com­ing Up, the band’s third, and most com­mer­cial, al­bum to date — and he plays a big part in the suc­cess of the lat­est al­bum, Night Thoughts, which was re­leased last month.The Suede of 2016 is a much more ex­cit­ing prospect than the band who limped from the late 1990s into the early 2000s. Af­ter Com­ing Up, An­der­son et al found them­selves in a cre­ative pickle, seem­ingly con­tent to re­lease by-num­bers mu­sic that sounded like a poor fac­sim­ile of what they had done so well just a few years be­fore. So hack­neyed was the fare on al­bums like 2002’s A New Morn­ing, that the band were in dan­ger of sul­ly­ing the mem­ory of their golden years.Few mourned their de­ci­sion in 2003 to go their sep­a­rate ways. There was fleet­ing ex­cite­ment when An­der­son and But­ler re­con­vened as The Tears, al­though the re­sult­ing al­bum, Here Come the Tears, failed to live up to the sum of their parts. A new gen­er­a­tion had lit­tle in­ter­est in them ei­ther, judg­ing by the ris­i­bly poor turn out for their late night show in Ox­e­gen in 2005. Twelve years on from be­ing rock’s hottest prop­erty and they were fac­ing a few hun­dred peo­ple in a vast tent in Kil­dare. It’s a cau­tion­ary tale for those feted bands who might think the adu­la­tion will last for­ever.Few mourned their de­ci­sion in 2003 to go their sep­a­rate ways. There was fleet­ing ex­cite­ment when An­der­son and But­ler re­con­vened as The Tears, al­though the re­sult­ing al­bum, Here Come the Tears, failed to live up to the sum of their parts. A new gen­er­a­tion had lit­tle in­ter­est in them ei­ther, judg­ing by the ris­i­bly poor turn out for their late night show in Ox­e­gen in 2005. Twelve years on from be­ing rock’s hottest prop­erty and they were fac­ing a few hun­dred peo­ple in a vast tent in Kil­dare. It’s a cau­tion­ary tale for those feted bands who might think the adu­la­tion will last for­ever.There was lit­tle en­thu­si­asm for Suede’s come­back al­bum, Blood­sports, in 2013 — es­pe­cially as it ar­rived just days af­ter An­der­son’s idol, David Bowie, had re­turned with a new al­bum af­ter a near decade-long hia­tus. But Suede’s al­bum was the real deal — packed as it was with blis­ter­ing tunes. The sound of a band re­vi­talised.(Three years later, by grim co­in­cide, the lat­est Suede al­bum, Night Thoughts, ar­rived in the wake of Bowie’s death and, con­se­quently, per­haps didn’t get the at­ten­tion it de­served.)
On Wed­nes­day, An­der­son and friends will show­case the al­bum at Dublin’s Olympia, the venue where they played out of their skins in sup­port of Blood­sports three years ago. Older and wiser, they seem to be liv­ing for the mo­ment if re­cent in­ter­views with An­der­son is any­thing to go by. And good luck to them.
It’s hard to know if Twit­ter is a fair barom­e­ter, but if it is the mak­ers of Re­bel­lion might want to go into hid­ing. Eipic, TG4’s 1916-themed mu­si­cal drama aimed at teens (it be­gan broad­cast­ing this week), seeks to tell the story in a con­tem­po­rary set­ting and em­ploy­ing mu­sic from the likes of LCD Soundsys­tem, Fu­ture Is­lands and FKA Twigs — but per­formed as Gaeilge by the cast. It’s a novel idea and an op­por­tu­nity to hear some great songs very dif­fer­ently. “With Eipic,” says pro­ducer Paddy Hayes, “the mu­sic is al­most like a Tro­jan horse. You get them in through that and they’ll stay.”

PRESS

THE GUARDIAN

Music Video being released
https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2016/jan/13/suede-see-their-new-video-for-pale-snow

with Brett Anderson:
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/feb/24/soundtrack-of-life-brett-anderson
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/jan/14/suedes-brett-anderson-theres-a-balance-between-sounding-like-yourself-and-not-being-a-self-parody

You can find all of Brett Anderson's contributions to The Guardian here.

REVIEWS OF ALBUMS:
https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2002/sep/15/featuresreview.review3

THE TIMES

Articles by Stephen Dalton (Alexandra Palace, Albert Hall)

THE TELEGRAPH

Positive reception to their comeback 

• http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/rockandpopmusic/10400779/Suede-interview-The-best-new-band-in-Britain-again.html
• http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/live-music-reviews/10385517/Suede-The-Garage-review.html
• http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/live-music-reviews/9963716/Suede-Alexandra-Palace-review.html
• http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/cdreviews/9916166/Suede-Bloodsportsalbum-review.html

THE DAILY MAIL

Positive rating, 4 out of 5 stars:

• 'godlike genius' gong for suede | Daily Mail Online
• http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/event/article-3444312/Suede-hell-leather-opening-night-short-UK-tour.html

Suede’s youthful provocations, Animal Nitrate, Metal Mickey, So Young, crackle with frenzied energy and still sound remarkably cool and contemporary. Following singalong acoustic renditions of This Time and Everything Will Flow, a closing New Generation, from 1994’s brooding Dog Man Star, captures the blend of nostalgia and futurism that always defined Suede – and which, remarkably, appears to be more effective than ever.

THE SUN

• https://www.thesun.co.uk/archives/news/588752/youre-not-entitled-to-make-an-album-just-because-you-exist/

THE DAILY EXPRESS

• https://www.express.co.uk/dayandnight/329688/Suede-are-a-superstitious-lot
• https://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/music/424583/Review-Suede-Live-by-the-Lake-Kenwood-House-Friday-August-23
• https://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/music/467811/Review-Suede-at-The-Royal-Albert-Hall-for-Teenage-Cancer-Trust

THE DAILY STAR

• https://www.dailystar.co.uk/showbiz/playlist/304911/Suede-Charts-are-terrible
• https://www.dailystar.co.uk/showbiz/playlist/306709/Gig-review-Suede-Alexandra-Palace-London

MAGAZINES

NME

Brett talks about a long relationship with NME.

PITCHFORK

Review on their 2010 comeback compilation album:
https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14853-the-best-of-suede/

BOOKS 

Soon to publish memoir: 
http://www.nme.com/news/music/suede-brett-anderson-memoir-2018293

To be published in March 2018, already available for pre-ordering:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Coal-Black-Mornings-Brett-Anderson/dp/1408710501

SOCIAL MEDIA

Fake twitter account:

Of all the fake celebrity Twitter accounts that have sprung up in recent years, fewer have been more amusing than the mock ramblings of Suede singer Brett Anderson. Referring to himself in the third person, @reallybanderson is the archetypal bitchy, rich rock star who is as dismissive of his band mates as he is sure of his own brilliance. A typical tweet reads: “It’s not every day you ride a stallion around Notting Hill, smoking fags and wearing Gucci shoes. Not unless you’re Brett Anderson.” As with all good parodies, it sails close to the wind. It is therefore of some relief when the real Brett Anderson arrives at our Notting Hill rendezvous neither on a horse, nor reeking of cigarettes, nor sporting Italian loafers. The 46-year-old says he “loves” the fake account. “The only thing that bothers me is when people think it’s actually me,” he laughs. While he says that the person he really is couldn’t be further from the man portrayed, he concedes that the bogus account has taken his public persona and “extremified” it.

...

ARTIST RESEARCH - Record Label, Managers, Producers

RECORD LABEL: Nude Records

It was the best of both worlds, the worldwide distribution was handled by a major label, however inside the UK Nude Records was indie.

However, they did have some disagreements, such as insisting a track that they thought would be more commercially successful be a single, or that the band appear in a video even though Suede felt they wanted to be more abstract and have a video without them appearing in it.

With Bloodsports: Warner Bros.

CURRENT: Suede Ltd. 
Owned by Warner Bros
So they are still linked to the Big Three

Ed Buller, the producer of their first three albums, and then their most recent two, shows this is a producer they feel comfortable with and trust as well. He was also back for the single Attitude, which was seen as an improvement just before they broke up.

They do not have a YouTube Channel with Vevo.

ARTIST RESEARCH - Critical Kudos

In 2013 NME named their debut album, Suede, 78th best album ever:

However, their second album, Dog Man Star, the 31st best album ever:



Huge critical acclaim for most recent album:
Telegraph review:

Suede’s Night Thoughts essayed a grungy, trashy, kitchen-sink tone in keeping with their own origins as council estate aesthetes. Let’s put it this way, I don’t think I have ever seen so much vomiting in a music promo. It is probably not for everyone, involving psychological breakdown, murder and suicide, shot with a kind of Nan Goldin style low-life veracity. But songs and images worked in powerful conjunction, so each threw inner light on the other.
As the film progressed, backlights revealed the band behind the screen, so they became tiny figures in the unfolding narrative, swaying in the waters washing over a drowning man, singer Brett Anderson falling to his knees during the dramatic, despairing I Don’t Know How To Reach You whilst the onscreen protagonist fell apart at the seams. Bands have been using filmic visuals for decades but I have never seen a rock concert staged quite like this. It was a tightly conceived theatrical experience which compelled the audience to engage with unfamiliar material, a series of songs that flowing together to make a harmonious and greater whole. The long player has suffered commercially in the modern era of playlists and single track streaming but this, at least, suggested there are ways albums might evolve to resist such unbundling.

...

ARTIST VID #3 - Stay Together

POSSIBLE POINTS OF INFLUENCE:

• Brett Anderson walking across the and off the edge of screen 
• Brett also turning around to the sound of the guitar solo, then singing
• One time when the drums are playing, Simon Gilbert in a concept segment is hitting against a wall, something that the protagonist of my narrative/concept could do

TRACK: Stay Together
ALBUM: Non-album single
YEAR: 1994
GENRE: Britpop
DIRECTOR: Jon Klein
LABEL:  Nude Records
SINGLE?: Yes

BACKGROUND/CONTEXT

• Final video with Bernard Butler in it
• Suede have since said they are somewhat disappointed with the video (here)
• 
  

PERFORMANCE, NARRATIVE OR CONCEPT?

Mixture of performance and concept, with the band in the concept segments later.

EXTRA SOUND:

Track not altered.

TITLES:
No titles.

NARRATIVE ENIGMA:

It takes around 30 seconds until we get to the band, the hardcore fans will be anticipating them, might turn some off who don't know them.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LYRICS AND VISUALS:
"Poisonous sky" - The pink, smokey sky

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SOUND AND VISUALS:
The water pouring out of the lips.

GENRE SIGNIFIERS:
Can't really be pinpointed to a film, TV or literary genre.

INTERTEXTUAL REFERENCES:


OTHER NARRATIVE THEORY:
Romance story?

KATE DOMEILLE
The loss of something personal?


BRANDING:
Hitting at the Metal Mickey, a sign how they've hated what Britpop is becoming?

REPRESENTATION:
GENDER: ...

ETHNICITY: ...

SEXUALITY: ...

CLASS: ...

ABILITY/DISABILITY: ...

AUDIENCE REPRESENTED/TARGETED:
....

PLANNING - Diegetic Intros

*Add the ones from the Blog Offline*

• The interruptive radio shit on a few songs
• A lot of sounds in and the final cry at the end of Stay Together extended version
• The whistling at the end of New Generation
• Children singing at fire at the end of We Are The Pigs, I don't think I'm going to be able to get children en Masse convincingly, similar to how Evie found it problematic to get children for her bullying flashback.
• The end of 2013 track Always

...

INDIE ROCK MV #2: Arctic Monkey's One For The Road

POSSIBLE POINTS OF INFLUENCE

• The quick cuts to the beat 
• The black + white, but I want to mix it with colour
• The tractor

Also the thumbnail of the video

ACT: Arctic Monkeys
TRACK: One For The Road
ALBUM: AM
YEAR: 2013
GENRE: (Indie) Rock
DIRECTOR: Focus Creeps
LABEL:  Domino (indie, but distributed by ADA, which is owned by Warner)
SINGLE?: Yes, 4th single, released 3 months after album
                      released with a B-Side, "You're So Dark"

BACKGROUND/CONTEXT

• Their most commercially successful album
• Working with their stalwart director, Focus Creeps
• 
  

PERFORMANCE, NARRATIVE OR CONCEPT?

Often you'll see a cross-cutting between performance and concept, with the band playing men in suits and later going into band performance modes. There are mysterious women and quirky vehicles.

EXTRA SOUND:

No extra sounds

TITLES:
The jacket acts as a diegetic title.

Opening shot starts with an extreme longshot,
but the low key lighting could downsize it as an establishing 

In the first 10 secs the camera has zoomed in,
and hallway through the woman turns so the title is
clearly seen on the jacket

NARRATIVE ENIGMA:

Withholding information from the audience, which we get in the opening sequence as mention before, and who these female characters are remains ambiguous.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LYRICS AND VISUALS:
"One For The Road", vehicles travelling down the road.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SOUND AND VISUALS:
Quick takes introducing each member, with the lead singer saved till last.
*Insert GIF*

GENRE SIGNIFIERS:
Genres include rock (heavy metal, punk, indie) pop, jazz. 

INTERTEXTUAL REFERENCES:
...

OTHER NARRATIVE THEORY:
Todorov, Propp, Levi-Strauss? 

BRANDING:
Do we see the album sleeve hidden somewhere? Are they wearing costumes they will wear on live shows? Or other elements like the money bills in Kraftklub's 500 K.

HIERARCHY OF THE BAND
In terms of proxemics Alex Turner is infant of his, and he is the one following Andrew Goodwin's notion of looking, looking directly at the audience while 

REPRESENTATION:
Not heavy sexualisation but the Male Gaze can still be said to have been applied here.

AUDIENCE REPRESENTED/TARGETED:
The band still look attractive to a female teen audience, so there is the potential still of continuing to market their audience, something which older bands today like Depeche Mode and U2 can't do, and this ageism will eventually reach the Monkeys as it does all boybands. 

ARTIST RESEARCH - Commercial Success: The Charts

CHART SUCCESS BY ALBUM

Suede

LINKS:

OfficialCharts; 

Singles:

Albums:

...

GENRE THEORY - Creativity Limitations

From this students revision flashcards:

This is countered by Maria Beville's book Gothic postmodernism - voicing the terrors of postmodernism, where she mentions many theorists,
you can find the bit here.

• Student Presentation on Hodge + Kress. 
• Gunther Kress: Communication and Culture, search for genre

NARRATIVE THEORY #6: Jonathan Culler's Narratology

POSSIBLE POINTS OF INFLUENCE

• My music video is a discourse on the story, not the actual story itself 

Jonathan Culler is an English structuralist, literary theorist and critic.

ARTIST RESEARCH - Commercial Success In The Digital Age

SPOTIFY

Picture used not updated to feature the current line-up (without Butler, plus Richard Oakes and Neil Codling)

Spotify clicks, most popular song by far is Beautiful Ones, 13.5m listens. This shows how compilation albums bring new attention to songs, with all the tracks being from there and not their original albums.

MONTHLY LISTENERS

YOUTUBE

Link

...
Their most popular vids, with Beautiful Ones being the highest again by far with 11 million views:

Wiki:

In the year leading up to the release of their first album, Suede were the most written-about band in Britain.^[34] The album Suede entered the British charts at number one, registering the biggest initial sales of a debut album since Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Welcome to the Pleasuredome a decade before.^[10] It sold over 100,000 copies in its first week of release,^[35] going gold on its second day.^[36] The album's release was met with high critical praise and hype.^[22] At the time it was hailed as "the most eagerly awaited debut since Never Mind The Bollocks by the Sex Pistols."^[37] Some notable press at the time was the front cover of the April 1993 issue of Select, which is seen by many as the start of Britpop.^[25] The album won the 1993 Mercury Prize.^[36] The band donated the entire £25,000 in prize money to Cancer Research.^[38] This was the only album released in the US under the name "Suede", where it remains the band's highest selling release.^[39]

The Britpop wiki entry claimed it was the fastest-selling debut album in British history, I checked their source,  and it goes even further to say that:

By and large, Suede fulfilled the expectations, as they had a series of hit singles that all charted higher than the first, and their 1993 self-titled debut became the fastest-selling record in British history. 

However that gives no sourcing, so I don't think either are reliable.

This site goes on to talk about how they had much less success in the USA:

Suede may have become British stars in 1993, but they couldn't find a niche in America. During 1994, the band's star began to fade, as Butler left the group before the completion of their second album. That alone wouldn't have been enough to dim their stardom, but the band had created a monster with their debut album that soon outgrew the band itself. Over the course of 1994, no less than three bands emerged as massively popular artists, both commercially and critically. Of these bands, Blur was the first and most successful. 

...