Rhianna's Media A2 Work: Star Image

The star I will be analysing is Geri Halliwell. I chose this artist because I believe her image has changed enourmously over time going from a group to singing as a solo artist. Geri Halliwell was born in the 6th of August 1972, she is an English pop singer. She first became famous in 1996 as a member of the girl group "Spice Girls" As a solo artist she has released four number 1 singles in the UK. Geri Halliwell doesn't have a varied genre that she usually works in, it is pretty much just pop music.
As I said, Geri Halliwell first got her name in fame by being in the group "The Spice Girls", she was very young when she became famous, in her early 20's. Her image has changed rapidly since then. The spice girls had names that they went by in the group, Geri's being "Ginger Spice" along with the other group members whose names were "scary spice", "posh spice", "Sporty spice" and "baby spice", this, along with many other aspects attracted them to a very young audience, mainly children and young teens, Originally Geri was going to be named "Sexy Spice" but as they were targeting a very young audience they changed it. She also wore a very outragous outfit which made her known across many countries, she wore the union jack dress, this gave her an individual identity and people would recognise her just through seeing the dress she wore. The songs they sung were also very childish such as "Spice up your life" and "Stop" etc. Shortly after the spice girls ended, Geri launched her solo career in 1999 with the song schizophonic. This was the start of a more serious Geri, a more grown up Geri, in which she wanted to also target a wider audience and an older more serious audience, this showed that she was very serious about her music career at this point, and her videos at this point showed that too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJLIiF15wjQ
Geri in her first video came across as very young and friend orientated, you could see that The Spice Girls didn't look as serious about their music careers as most more grown up bands may be. The outfits they wore and the lyrics they sung shows this more than anything else.

In the video "Lift me up" you can quite clearly see her image had changed rapidly from the video above of her in the spice girls, she had coloured her hair, lost weight, and got rid of the union jack dress. Geri is shown performing in a lot of the Spice girls videos, combining all of her talents, singing, acting and dancing, whereas in her most recent videos where she has become a solo artist she is purely just singing, and her whole video is based around the song. This basically says that she knows she is famous now and people know who she is, so she doesn't need all of the props and costumes to make her liked, as she already is.
You can see the million attempts in all of the spice girl videos that they do to make themselfs known and recogniseable as stars, to create a vivid star image, although Geri on her own not as "Ginger Spice" has a totally different star image, a more serious star image is being put across.
I believe the star was such a big success overall because "The Spice Girls" came around in the 90's which was when girl/boy bands were very popular, especially amoungst teens. They were young and fresh and children/teens could feel a connection to The spice girls, to some of their songs which tend to have some meaning to them e.g. "Mama" and "Goodbye", I believe Geri Halliwell was not such a great success as a solo artist as she no longer had her star image to fall back on, she stopped with the high stalletos and the union jack dress and created a more sophisticated Geri in her videos, which I don't believe the audience enjoyed as much as they did when Geri was "Ginger Spice".
To sum up my essay I will finish by saying that Geri's image has changed massively over the years, more so then any of the other spice girls! She has changed her immaturity into real maturity and you can see this as the years pass in her videos.

Geri as a Spice Girl when she first became famous;