Review of Publications

               Acosta and Fernanda's (2018) study examined Childish Gambino's songs and music video 'This is America,' which addressed the three main issues: gun control in the United States, African American stereotypes, and their portrayal in mass media. In addition, they highlight the manipulated discourse in the media that was found not only among African Americans, but other minority groups as well. This study provided a multimodal analysis using the visual semiotic framework and systematic functional discourse linguistics. The components of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) were used as a reference for this study. The three-dimensional method of discourse analysis was used as the main tool for data analysis. Fernanda (2018), Gambino seemed to agree with various aspects of the literature stating that elements of African American culture were embraced and celebrated while others were rejected and used to portray a negative image. In addition, the researcher examined the main elements that Gambino employed to make a social critique that addressed the current situation and representation of African Americans and the problem of gun violence in the United States. However, it appeared that regardless of the idealized multicultural society that the United States was trying to sell African Americans, as well as other minority groups still difficulties and obstacles on a daily basis.

               The study conducted by Dewi (2022) aimed to analyze how the singer’s (Adele) role or attitude toward a song by examining the effect, judgment, and appreciation. The research data was collected using the lyrics of Adele’s song ‘Easy on Me’ by using a descriptive qualitative method by applying three analytical processes from Fairclough's CDA model; The first stage was to analyze the text of the lyrics of the song and then interpreted and presented the results of the song text analysis in a descriptive form. The result of the study revealed that the song 'Easy on Me' by Adele was a song about a divorce or separation and about a child who was sad because of the separation of her parents. Adele explicitly described her feelings in this song using figures of speech. She also estimated that divorce or separation from the relationship was the end of her journey, so she wanted to give up and surrender.

               Helland (2022) study examines an under-researched area of hip-hop, the global spread of Chicano rap, by conducting a multilingual and multimodal critical discourse analysis (MDA) of several music videos by Mona AKA San Girl, a Japanese female rapper whose song lyrics alternate between Japanese, Spanish, and English. Furthermore, this study examined how the artist constructs a feminist glocal identity through a combination of song lyrics, musical style, cultural iconography, body decoration, gestures, and film techniques that located the oppositional dialect of Chicano rap while challenging the discourse of patriarchy and nationalism. This study collected data from an interview with the artist and comments from social media platforms: YouTube videos, blogs, and Facebook. An in-depth analysis of the interplay of linguistic and other semiotic modes in this artist's music videos revealed four main themes: hybrid identity, feminism, social justice, and authenticity. These were found through the music videos "Azucena," "Map," "Laugh Now Cry Later," "Mascara Tears," "I Hate You," and "Sushi Doll. These music videos show how the themes contribute to her glocal hybrid identity from a multilingual and multimodal perspective. The results of this study showed that Mona's music videos provided an opportunity to examine her construction of a glocal hybrid identity that challenged prevailing discourses of homogeneity, cultural diversity, and gender role expectations in Japan. This study also suggested a broader application of a genre-based approach that combines sociolinguistic and multimodal discourse analyses (MDA) to examine issues of identity and ideology, commodification, authenticity, and cultural appropriation.

               Ruanglertsilp (2022), studied a discourse of self-empowerment in Ariana Grande's song lyrics in the 'thank u, next" album in the critical discourse analysis (CDA). The study aimed to find out two questions: what ideology of female self-empowerment was represented in the album and what linguistic strategies were used to represent these ideological concepts. Data were collected from all 12 songs in the album ‘thank u, next’, using a three-dimensional framework by Fairclough. Ruanglertsilp (2022), analyzed and interpreted the collected text in three phases of discourse analysis: description, interpretation, and explanation. In addition, Wodak's discourse history approach was used to examine the social actors. The results of the study showed that the song lyrics of the song promoted a self-empowered feminist ideology with four main themes: being independent and powerful, fostering self-love and growth, owning sexuality, and admitting mistakes and being needy. These suggested that being flawless was not necessary to become a strong woman. Having flaws and imperfections could also empower women by allowing them to accept their complexity. Furthermore, these ideological concepts were represented through a variety of linguistic strategies. Most of the statements used are negative, whereas clichés are used the least. The researcher also expected that her research could increase young audiences' understanding of the discursive marketing manipulations of the pop music industry.

               In 2022, Sinda and Ahmad conducted a study in which they tried to investigate and explore the interpersonal meaning of the song LATHI by Weird Genius, a well-known nationality music band, featuring Sara Fajira. The lyrics of this song are in English and Javanese. This study applied a qualitative approach to understanding the multimodality of this song. They used a descriptive-analytic study to explore how different semiotics and modes interacted to create interpersonal meaning. In addition, the study drew on the multimodal analysis of interpersonal meaning with a special focus on motion, speech, and image. This study aimed to show how interpersonal meaning was created in the music video of the song Lathi. The focus of the study was on analyzing the three modes: visual, aural, and gestural. For the visual mode, they discussed how the color of the shirts worn by the woman and the man in this music video represented the meaning of the music video. In aural mode, the sound of the instruments that appeared in each part of the song was analyzed and discussed, and the characteristic of the song was gamelans. Gestural modes, facial modes, and body language were discussed. The facial mode focused on the woman's facial expression, which represented this character's thoughts and conflicts. The body language which included the movement of the character's hands, and the body of the woman represented the character’s interaction in the music video. The results of the study showed that the message of the song and the music video was that there should be sincerity and purity without any forcing and possessing in a relationship, without any forcing or possessiveness, which was portrayed as the bad side of the relationship in the music video. Moreover, the results of this study showed that multimodality explained how we could combine multiple modes of communication in our daily life. A meaningful text could convey when all modalities were used in an audiovisual work in which every mode reinforced or represented ideas or messages.

               The result of the three studies by Dewi (2022), Sinda (2022), and Ruanglertsilp (2022) on pop music revealed love relationships between men and women which most of the time were unsuccessful as well as the construction of female identity, ideology, and empowerment.

               Besides the studies on pop music, a study on the sub-genre of rap music by Acosta and Fernanda (2018) and rap music by Helland (2022) revealed social problems in larger social contexts rather than interpersonal relationships as in pop music. For example, Acosta and Fernanda (2018) found the issues of gun, violence, and racial discrimination. The study by Helland (2022) suggested the struggle of multilingual individuals in finding true identities.

               Through discourse analysis, critical discourse analysis (CDA), and multimodal discourse analysis (MDA) to analyze songs’ lyrics and music videos. Those studies the issues of women’s life construction through the analysis of lyrics and music videos of pop music which were self-empowerment (Ruanglertsilp, 2022) and struggle in relationships and after the relationship (Dewi, 2022; Ruanglertsilp, 2022). Additionally, the result of the analysis of rap and trap music also showed social issues which were identity construction (Helland, 2022), and gun violence and racism (Acosta & Fernanda, 2018).

               In conclusion, the aforementioned studies of song lyrics and music videos reflected our daily life or personal life as the study of the song Easy on Me by Adele, is how women struggle in the relationship and society in general when they are trying to voice their desire to be known not to be submissive to men.

               The music video was the interpretation of the lyrics within a specific genre (the context of the lyrics in the particular situation in context) of the songs. Both music videos and lyrics tend to have similar themes. In other words, the producing of the music video must convey the closest theme to that of the lyrics because the writing of the lyrics and the production of the music videos took different places and times and involved different groups of people. However, the producing of the lyrics and music videos were produced in different spaces and times which might contribute to different interpretations of the lyrics to music. The use of multimodal in the production of music videos (e.g., background color, lighting, distance, camera movement, and camera angle) can help in the process of interpreting the theme of lyrics into music videos.