My project will be looking at songs that are considered LGBTQ “anthems,” either unofficially because they resonate among LGBTQ listeners, or officially because they directly speak to LGBTQ issues. While the project won’t be just an anthology of songs, it will probably (more or less) take on this format.
The first “piece” of the project will consist of lyrical analysis. I will select a reasonable number of songs—somewhere between 5 and 10, probably—and annotate places in the lyrics that are LGBTQ-related. This will look a lot like the format currently used by the lyrics website Genius.com. As of now, I’m not sure what tool I could use to make this, but I definitely want it to be more than a Word Document.
The second “piece” of the project would be a video, because evidently I am a masochist and want to keep using Shotcut, which is what I used for my remix. I would mix video clips (from music videos), audio clips (from songs), and interview clips (featuring artists) to create a kind of “compilation” of highlights from the songs. I would also like to accompany this with a Spotify playlist so that users can access the songs in their entirety, though I’m not sure this counts as a third “piece” of the project. This was my class partner’s idea, though, and I think it’s a really good one.
For the final “piece” of the project, I want to do something with social media, though I’m not exactly sure yet what that will be. There are plenty of news articles and blog posts that I could “share” or link to if I used Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook, so that might be what I do. My class partner suggested crafting some sort of social media persona who “shares” information about the songs/LGBTQ issues, which I think could be a good idea.
Mainly, I want to reach an audience of college-aged internet users who are interested in music and LGBTQ issues. This is why I want to include a social media aspect in my project, since this is probably the best way to reach this audience. YouTube and Spotify are also platforms that suit my audience well.
In all, the modes/media would be textual, visual, and audial. While the project is centered around music, the text (and symbolism) associated with the music are just as important, which is why it calls for a visual element as well. And as I said before, I would be using a video editor and then some sort of tool to create annotated, interactive lyrics.
The project could easily be uploaded to various platforms. Even if it was only on a few specific platforms, though, videos and URLs are fairly easy to share.