MEMES AND TROPES.

A trope is something that occurs over a period of time and creates a common convention. For example a trope of a horror film would include scary setting, tense music, bloody and gory scenes.

Closely related to this is a meme, which can be considered as ideas or beliefs that get carried from one person to another and so on. The word 'meme' is derived from 'mimeme' which means something is imitated.
Commonly music memes get transferred into tropes; this is because other artists/bands hear some lyrics or music notes they like and try to interpret them into their own music. Eventfully all these memes turn into the majority of people liking them, turning them into tropes.



An example to this is when Disney Pixar produced and released the film 'Finding Nemo' in May 2003 and a year later Deamworks produced and released the film 'Shark Tale' in 2004. Both of these films have a similar story line and are both based around sea life, fishes and sharks however it was said to be that each company knew nothing about the making of the other film.



Another prime example to this is the original version of 'Dragostea Din Tei' sang by O-zone; this was released in 2004 and the notes within sing 'maya he, maya ha'. From this Rihanna and TI have picked this up and in their song 'Live Your Life' and the song has the same notes 'maya he, maya ha' sang in the exact same way. This song was released in 2008.

Tropes and memes to do with POP music:

Pop music is seen as 'mainstream' meaning that a lot of pop artists and bands get recognised on a day to day basis and are very popular. The typical ideological tropes paired to pop singers are that they tend to be highly glamorous and good looking, with a sense of dignity about them considering they don't sing about drugs, sex or alcohol. They normally have a more positive attitude, singing about relationships, love and happiness. However as time has progressed on usual pop artists are breaking away from these tropes and are including more sexual and alcohol related lyrics which could have been influenced from other music genres such as R&B or rap. An example of this is Rihannas lyrics of "Cheers to the frickin' weekend, i'll drink to that" which is portraying ideas that pop artists get influenced into singing about alcohol and sexual references. When it comes to the pop genre of music magazines, they used to be relatively moderate and stick with the latest songs produced by artists and bands. However as the younger generation are becoming more interested in the latest celeb gossip and love life, pop magazines tend to include all the fresh hot gossip what artists and bands have been up to and their latest fashion/style, rarely putting the main focus on the music side of things; meaning that these features are now the tropes of a pop music mag.

Tropes and memes to do with INDIE music:

The 'indie' genre often implies ideas that it isn't well known and has a individual feel about it seeing as it isn't mainstream; this may be because people are not as fond of it compared to pop, R&B and so on. Indie bands usually have a unquie tone about them and often have tropes about being not as glamorous or attractive, independent, and seem to produce an 'unorganised' feel about their music.

This style of music tends to focus on real life issues, being unsensitive and sometimes singing aggressively in certain songs, rarely singing about love or relationships. Indie music magazines seem to reflect the idea of quite compact, busy content, with plain colours which reinforce the idea that the music doesn't have much life and normally stays within the set tropes.