4 Key Decisions: Artist

When making decisions about our artist, the first thing we were all sure of is that we wanted an indie rock or indie pop band, rather than a solo artist or band of a different genre. This is partly because it's music that we all like ourselves, which is important because if we aren't familiar with the kind of artist we're promoting, it will be difficult to make our products conventional or appealing to fans of that genre.

Also, indie music arguably gives us more creative opportunities than mainstream pop music, for example, because it tends to often be more boundary-pushing and isn't so confined to certain conventions or images - indie artists often have the scope to be more individual.

We chose the name "Sticky and the Melonheads". This was Juliette's suggestion and one that we all liked, because it fit well with our chosen track - it is a fun, quirky, not-too-serious name to fit with a fun, upbeat song. It's also memorable and definitely original, so our band will stand out and people will be more likely to remember them. Its individuality fits with the individual style of many indie bands. It was inspired by pre-existing band names, such as the indie rock band "Catfish and the Bottlemen" and rock band "Smashing Pumpkins".

Notes made in our production meeting

Sticky and the Melonheads, like other indie rock/pop bands, will play their own instruments. This is central to the image typical of the indie genre of the music itself being prioritised over the aesthetics of the band, and also works with our track, in which there is only one clear vocalist.

We decided in our meeting that we wanted two male members and two female members. There are two reasons for this:

1. It is more practical and convenient for us, since we have three girls and one boy in our group. We imagine one girl external to the band will be used for the part of his love interest in the music video, and finding another boy outside our group shouldn't be too difficult. 

2. We don't want the band to be too female-centric, which is why we don't want more than two female members, but at the same time, the indie genre is heavily dominated by all-male bands (e.g. Walk the Moon themselves, The 1975, Everything Everything, Kodaline, Arctic Monkeys, Vampire Weekend…) so there is a significant gap in the market for both female-based and mixed gender indie bands. Mixed gender bands especially have the potential to be successful, demonstrated by bands like Daughter and Paramore, which both have one female member.

In the notes above, we say we want a male lead, male drummer, female bassist and female guitarist (originally decided to be an external actor as lead, Brandon as drummer, Chrystal as bassist and me as guitarist). However, these plans aren't finalised and although we will definitely have a male lead (since the track we chose is sung by a man), we might change our minds about the roles of the other band members, depending on what we are able to do successfully and what looks best.

Our chosen track's original artist, indie pop band Walk the Moon, were formed in 2008, and consist of four male members from Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. The main distinctions between our band and Walk the Moon are:

- GENDER: while Walk the Moon is all male, Sticky and the Melonheads is a mixed gender band

- NATIONALITY: Walk the Moon are an American band, from Ohio - Sticky and the Melonheads are British

- CAREER HISTORY: "Shut Up and Dance" will be Sticky and the Melonheads' debut single, a track on their debut album - Walk the Moon, on the other hand, released their debut album i want i want in 2010, and Shut Up and Dance was released only this year to be part of their third album, Talking is Hard, coming in late 2014 

We researched existing bands to get an idea of what is stylistically conventional for bands of the genre:

McFly (current image), Walk the Moon, Everything Everything, Little Dragon, Daughter, 5 Seconds of Summer

We want to make our band's image original and different in some way from the bands pictured above, but we noticed that they are all dressed in mostly casual (but still stylised) clothing. Inspired by this, we like the idea of Sticky and the Melonheads wearing button-up shirts and skinny jeans, but the individual members will be dressed differently from each other, like they are in the bands shown above.

Another differentiation between Sticky and the Melonheads and Walk the Moon is their exact kind of image - looking at their website, we found that Walk the Moon have a slightly different image to what we envision for our band:

This image of them here seems too vibrant and over-saturated for us. Even though we want our band to be fun, the colouring and styling here seems a little over-the-top - see the drawing on the second band member's face, for example. Our band's styling will probably be slightly less bright and colourful, with softer grading used throughout their promotion, more like the pictures of Daughter and Little Dragon shown above.