Media Diary - Week 4

                                                              The album that changed my life.

Personally, I've never been a big believer in 'this band changed/saved my life!!!'. But, an album that did change my music taste entirely was 'A Beautiful Lie' by 30 Seconds to Mars. 

Discovering it in 2008, 3 years after it release, I remember being astounded by the bands' sound. As a naive and impressionable 11 year old , I searched for some of their other music. I was not disappointed! In 2002, 30 Seconds to Mars had released a self titled record, which was even better than the show stopping A Beautiful Lie. The lyrics on the self titled concept album are centered around human struggle and self determination. This is shown through many personal lyrics on all of the tracks. One set of lyrics that has stuck with me for almost 6 years now is the opening track of the album, 'Capricorn (A Brand New Name)'. It opens with 'So I run, hide, tear myself up and start again with a brand new name'. What I have taken from these lyrics is that anybody can change their life completely around if they are determined enough to do so,

whether this was Leto's initial intentions or not.

With A Beautiful Lie, came 4 singles. These 4 singles brought beautifully directed music videos. The video for 'The Kill' contains intertextuality as it is solely based around the Stephen King classic 'The Shinning'. It was essentially the single that gave the band their 'big break', winning awards such as the 2007 Kerrang! Best Single, Best Video of the Year and Best Rock Video at the MTV Australia Video Music Awards. The video for 'From Yesterday' was the first music video ever shot in the People's Republic of China in it's entirety. The lead singer, Jared Leto, directs all of the bands music videos under a 'secret' identity, 'Bartholomew Cubbins', but lets be real, it's not fooling anybody that this is Leto's incredible work. 

In 2013, I FINALLY got to see 30 Seconds to Mars live, after what seemed like an eternity. I was not too keen on their latest album 'Love, Lust, Faith and Dreams' as it seemed more like an album filled with pop ballads rather than alternative rock songs. When I saw them, Jared Leto's voice was incredible live and I still believe that Shannon Leto is one of the best drummers out there. However, their set was only 14 songs and after 5 years of waiting I was kind of disappointed that they were playing their more recent songs and nothing from the self titled album, yet included a cover of Rihanna's 'Stay'. 

Although I no longer feel the same way about 30 Seconds to Mars, they were the first ever rock band I got into and I am so thankful that I listened to them, otherwise I wouldn't have heard of some of my favourite bands today.