Post 6: My chosen track

My song is Express Yourself by Labrinth, released in 2012 under the Syco label, the song peaked at number 12 on the UK singles chart and interpolates a classic funk sample from the song "Express Yourself" by Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band and mixes it with the famous drum break from James Brown's Funky Drummer. These samples, combined with an EDM inspired instrumental at the chorus and upbeat lyrics is exactly the sort of genre mixing, upbeat sounding music common to the pop music genre. It was premiered on the fourth live semi-final of the sixth series of Britain's Got Talent.

The original performance of the song, complete with Labrinth's cool blue suit and a fun colourful background

The original artist is very similar to my star persona, as Labrinth is an artist that also radiates positive vibes and upbeat energy, this meant the song would be a perfect fit for my planned star, as well as it being very pop-sounding and having no expletives.

Labrinth's colourful outfit, reflecting his star persona

The song I originally wanted to do was Sunflower by Post Malone and Swae Lee, which although does have the cheery sound I wanted, it verged too closely to hip-hop music that I decided Express Yourself would suit the task better.

Instead, my song allows for very open interpretation of the message, whether that be a direct narration of the song, which tells the story of not fitting in and learning to be yourself; the interpretation of the original video that just shows a montage of various people's unique hobbies and talents, or the interpretation I went with, which is a story of someone being inspired and inspiring others to express themselves. Though similar to the original video as it still follows the express yourself theme of the song, I made sure to make my video different to the original in most other ways, what with its story and more grounded presentation. During my planning for the video, I kept my viewing of the original video to a minimum as I didn't want to get too caught up in that idea and let it influence my own.

The original video shows a man spraypainting a van, though funny I didn't want to take the risk of promoting things that were of questionable legality in my video.

Labrinth's chilled-out performance of the song; he looks like he's just enjoying himself and isn't too bothered about performing to the audience.

The punk drummer performing for a group of middle-aged women, highlighting the comical, absurd tone of the original video