Mazzy Star - Into Dust Lyrics

Still falling
Breathless and on again
Inside today
Inside me today
Around broken in two
Til your eyes share into dust
Like two strangers turning into dust
Til my hand shook with the weight of fear
I could possibly be fading
Or have something more to gain
I could feel myself growing colder
I could feel myself under your fate
Under your fate
It was you, breathless and torn
I could feel my eyes turning into dust
Into strangers, turning into dust
Turning into dust
Turning into dust

From these lyrics I have personally envisioned a very mysterious and confusing video. It is common in 'Indie' or 'Alternative Rock', as is more applicable to this particular song, videos that there is a different or 'strange' element to. It is more common than not that the video wouldn't make any sense and/or would be left unexplained, or at least the actions of the performer would be left unexplained.

Mazzy Star And It's Genre Research

Who is Mazzy Star?

'Mazzy Star is an American alternative rock band formed in Santa Monica in 1989 from the group Opal, a collaboration of guitarist David Roback and bassist Kendra Smith.'

'Smith's friend Hope Sandoval became the group's vocalist when Smith left the band.'

'Mazzy Star is probably best known for the song "Fade into You" which brought the band some success in the early to mid 1990s and was the group's biggest mainstream hit, earning extensive exposure on MTV, Vh1 and radio airplay. Roback and Sandoval were the creative center of the band, with Sandoval as lyricist and Roback as composer of the majority of the band's material.'

'Mazzy Star's roots in the California Paisley Underground movement of the 1980s are deep. Roback, along with his brother Steve, was one of the main architects of leading Los Angeles psychedlic revival band, the Rain Parade. Leaving that band after their first LP, he founded Opal in the mid-1980s with ex- Dream Syndicate bassist Kendra Smith. Opal's quasi-psychedelic ruminations, with their guitar drones and hints of blues and folk, weren't far off the map that Mazzy Star would follow, and indeed Roback met Sandoval through Smith.'

'Sandoval, still in high school at the time, was playing in a duo called Going Home with Sylvia Gomez; Kendra was impressed enough to make a tape of their music and pass it on to Roback, who produced a still-unreleased album by the pair.'

'When Smith left Opal under cloudy circumstances in the middle of an American tour with The Jesus & Mary Chain, Sandoval was tapped as her replacement. After that tour and a jaunt through Europe were completed, Opal disbanded, and Roback and Sandoval decided to continue collaborating in Mazzy Star.'

'Into Dust'

"Into Dust" was not released as an official single. Public interest in the song developed as a result of its use on a mobile phone advert in the summer of 2009, and the song charted on the week beginning 18 July 2009 due to download sales alone.

Under which genre does Mazzy Star - Into Dust fall?

The song or album that the song is included in is called 'So Tonight That I Might See' is classed as belonging to the genre Alternative Rock, Dream Pop, Psychedelic, and Acoustic.

What is Alternative Rock?

It is a genre of rock music that emerged in the 1980s and became widely popular in the 1990s. Alternative rock consists of various subgenres that have emerged from the independent music scene since the 1980s, such as grunge, Britpop, gothic rock, and indie pop. These genres are unified by their collective debt to the style and/or ethos of punk rock, which laid the groundwork for alternative music in the 1970s. At times alternative rock has been used as a catch-all phrase for rock music from underground artists in the 1980s, and all music descended from punk rock (including punk itself, New Wave, and post-punk).

What is Dream Pop?

It is a subgenre of alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom in the mid-1980s. The essence of the music is a focus on ethereal textures and moods, rather than on propulsive rock riffs. Breathy, high-register female vocals or almost whispered male vocals are usually the means of lyrical delivery; lyrics are generally introspective and existential in nature. Cover art tends to consist of blurry pastel imagery and/or stark minimalist designs. Overall, the 4AD record label is the one most associated with dream pop, though others such as Creation, Projekt, Fontana, Bedazzled, Vernon Yard and Slumberland also released significant records in the genre.

What is Psychedelic music?

Psychedelic music covers a range of popular music styles, genres and scenes, that may include psychedelic rock, psychedelic folk, psychedelic pop, psychedelic soul, psychedelic ambient, psychedelic trance, and others. Psychedelic rock is also commonly called acid rock. Psychedelic music can occur in almost every genre of music, including classical Western art music.

What is Acoustic music?

Acoustic music comprises music that solely or primarily uses instruments which produce sound through entirely acoustic means, as opposed to electric or electronic means. The retronym "acoustic music" appeared after the advent of electric instruments, such as the electric guitar, bass guitar, electric organ and synthesizer.

Performers of acoustic music often increase the volume of their output using electronic amplifiers. However, these amplification devices remain separate from the amplified instrument and reproduce its natural sound accurately.

New Idea

Since my group received negative feedback for our original music video ideas for the song 'Haven't Met You Yet' by Michael Buble, we had to reconsider what type of genre of music we would be able to produce a video for most effectively.

Our three main ideas were as follows;

• 'Blanket' by Urban Species Feat. Imogen Heap
• 'Angel' by Massive Attack
• 'Into Dust' by Mazzy Star

Our teacher thought it best that we used the Mazzy Star song 'Into Dust' and supplied us with some great starting ideas and themes. This enabled us to create our own adapted thoughts and ideas about the music video that we would like to make for the song.

We sat down as a group to reach a mutual decision on what we wanted to include in the video, and discussed a theme, shot ideas (in terms of camera angle etc.), and people to include. After finding common ground and reaching a final idea, we began to develop it and put it into action by discussion the creation of a moodboard. We also printed off the lyrics to the song and came up with ideas involving these. This would create a relationship between the lyrics and visuals in the video, and would enable it to be considered more likely to be an actual media product.

One of our original ideas involves a female performer sitting on a stool in a run-down barn in a long flowing white dress, with a male seated, also on a stool, behind her, playing an acoustic guitar. We have discussed having 'old-fashioned' rugs and bits of carpets on the floor, fairy lights hanging around the area and a microphone on a stand at the front of the area.

In addition to the performance-based part of the music video, my group also plans to use a narrative-based part, to split the video up, as it is a very slow-paced song we need to be able to keep the viewer interested.

The plan for the narrative-based section of the video is going to be mysterious and confusing. It is not going to be so much a story or narrative, more like just shots of the female performer walking and running around the woods, that has balloons tied to the trees. There is not going to be an explanation as to where the balloons came from, and why the female is in the woods. This will hopefully create the desired effect that my group want to create.

After comparing the two different scenes, and discussing how they would fit and work together, my group changed the plan that the female would be wearing the white dress in the barn scene, and instead dressed her in this costume for the woods scene. This was due to the fact that after looking at existing media music videos, it is quite common or understood that in outside scenes, for example in woods, water, and beach, the female performer wears a long light-coloured dress.

So, before the filming can be started, and therefore completed, my group will need to make a decision on the outfit for the barn scene of the music video.

We plan to use the female mouthing the lyrics to the song, in a singing fashion, throughout the video, but not singing all of the lines. We are going to discuss how we feel, as a group, about the female singing the words to the song that are during the part of her in the woods. Do we need her to sing these words as well as the words that are sung while she is in the barn for the music video to look good and 'proper'? Will it look strange if she is not, or will it work better if she sings throughout? Will she need to sing all of the lyrics in the song or can some lines of lyrics be left unsung while the viewer is kept busy with the visuals given? In order to find answers to these questions, we will need to experiment during filming. By this is mean that we will need to double film sections or actions of the video. We will need to film a shot with the female singing the lines doing an action and then re-film the same shot without her singing and see which works better.