Decision-Making Process in Song Choice

This blog contains the decision making process in song choice, where we choose the song and research about our music video song choice.  This blog was created by me (Tisha) 

Song Choice

 

    For this music video project, as we have decided on our genre being RnB genre we wanted to discuss our goals for this project. This is done so that our ideas are on the same page and it would be easier to create our music video by combining ideas that would connect easily. In order to have a fair decision on the song we will do, I asked all of the team member to each give a song from the RnB genre they think would be able to create a good music video. 

    As our team is a group of 4, from the 3 of my team member they gave suggestion on a song but I was not well known by any songs from the RnB genre so I was okay with following what the team has decided to choose. These song choices were discussed in our Whatsapp group chat (Fig 1), it shows how we all talked about our opinions and song we wanted to do.

Fig 1 - Shows our discussion about opinions from song choices

In result the song choice includes:

• pov by Ariana Grande (2021)
• Kill Bill by SZA (2023)
• Folded by Kehlani (2025)

    In order to find the perfect song, we decided to create a list of the pros and cons of each songs in order to be able to finalize our decision in picking the song we want to choose for this music video project. We create this pros and cons by balancing the differences from each song by watching their music video. 

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Pros and Cons of Song Choices

pov by Ariana Grande (2021)

    For this song, based on research from google the song was published from the album in 30 October 2020 following the released of Ariana Grande's sixth album Position, making this song being under 5 years but it was officially released by Republic Records on March 31 2021. This song is considered as a R&B song, but Ariana Grande is well known by being a Pop artist making it contains pop genre conventions, which if we were to use this song we will need to meet 2 different genre conventions added into our music video. As a group we are more familiar with pop genre so it would be easier to make an idea on what to add in the music video, with the title being pov we had several ideas on using point of view (pov) shot throughout the song so that it would be more connected to the song. The song doesn't have an official music video and only a lyric video which contains dance choreography to the lyrics which makes the song being on the performance side. Without the music video and just the choreography it was hard to gain inspiration for what would fit in our music video. 

Kill Bill by SZA (2023)

    SZA is well known for making R&B song which by watching her music video it allows us to gain many inspiration for R&B genre conventions to inspire us to be added in our music video. The music video that we watched contains inappropriate performance and for us we think that it was really cringe if we were to use the song based on the lyrics. The lyrics of the song was as well awkward to be acted out, but at the same time the song tone uses a very tension emotion such as anger in singing it which would need an actor that have more proper actor that acts professionally to play that role. The whole vibe from the song is dark and very emotional to which we think it would be hard to try and make that music video to align with the dark and emotional feeling. 

Folded by Kehlani (2025)

    Kehlani is also known for being a R&B artist where she is also known as a dancer which is why in this song Folded music video are heavily focus with performance based. As we use music video to gain inspiration for our music video, with performance we believe that the performance was very overwhelming.  From the music video as well, we tried watching it multiple time but the narrative of it is quite unclear, so it will be hard to figure out a narrative that would match this song. In the music video, it is heavily leaning to the performance side which they were inappropriate for our project but the idea of having performance was good to express emotions which we wanted to add. 

    To which after analyzing the three options pros and cons we decided to choose pov by Ariana Grande as our final song.

This decision was made because the song is easier to adapt with the resources that we have. Along side with when we were discussing over the pros and cons we were able to have a clear goal on what the narrative of the music video would be if we chose the song pov by Ariana Grande. Although it doesn't have an official music video, this actually allow us to have a more creative freedom to develop our own original concept rather than getting ideas off an existing music video. 

Reflection: I believe that doing this analyzing by comparing the different song choices we had allow us as a team to understand what the groups goal is and they are more informed rather than creating a decision that is based on personal preferences. By comparing between the pros and cons of the songs could allow us to reduce the risk of having difficulties on figuring out what narrative, genre conventions to use while also balancing out whether our resources were able to create the idea. 

    As for me being not well informed with songs and even narrative of R&B songs, this was a really great opportunity for me to be able to understand each perspective of my team mates that were well more knowledgeable about R&B. This also helped us improved our team work and communication skills. As for me, this team work skill allow me to understand everyone especially as I will be the one editing the video this gives me goal on what to create and do not feel blanked out / confused when editing the music video as I did not have a full knowledge about R&B that deep. While communication skills, with the opportunity of everyone speaking this allowed us all to speak up based on our perspective of the music while understanding them to create a new idea. 

    Overall, this process in deciding the song choice was a really fun and it gives this process in creating the music video a strong foundation to work on as now we have clear directions on what the music would be and being able to achieve our aim.