Researching and Analysing Album Covers by Existing Bands

I'm going to conduct some research into albums by existing girl bands. As we made a music video for a girl band, this research will benefit me and will give me an insight into the general conventions used and how the artists use them to appeal to their mass audience which will be useful for when I create a digipak for my band.

Example One:

The Saturdays always use their individual colours for each girl, which is a similiar feature to what we've done in our music video. From the image above you can see the latest album released by The Saturdays called 'Headlines'. By analysing the mise-en-scene I can establish that the girls are wearing casual clothes, but are sitting on an individual coloured chair with their shoes to match the colour of the chair. For my album cover, I think I will use each of the girl's individual colour as an prominent convention e.g. Megi was pink, Sam was red, Vanessa was purple and I was green. This shows individuality and expresses the girls' personalities e.g. pink and red connote love/passion and green connotes nature etc.

The album 'Chasing Lights' pictured above is the first album by The Saturdays which shows the girls representing their indidvual colours by wearing brightly coloured dresses with black tights and shoes. The whole image of the album is in black and white apart from the girls dresses which is a unique element used by 'The Saturdays' to make them each stand out as individual personalities.  Their name is also keep within their house-style by using the same font on each album for their name.

Although the girls have used a different font style here for their name for their second album 'WORDSHAKER', they have still kept to the convention of each girls' individual colour thus maintaining an element of their house-style. The mise-en-scene shows them more done up compared to their previous albums as they have their hair in different styles whilst all wearing fancy dresses.

Example Two:

Although a bit distorted, we can see from the image above that Girls Aloud also use bright, distinctive colours on their album covers in order to appeal to and attract the audience. The girls are all wearing dresses with bright shoes to match. They've used the same font in different colours for different texts, in order to stand out and appeal to their target audience.

Example Three:

I thought it would be good to look at the girl band 'Cherish' as they consist of four members who are all sisters and our band is made up of four members. By analysing their albums it will give me an insight into how the four girls are used alongside general album conventions to appeal to their target audience. 

Their first album pictured above entitled 'unappreciated'  is simple and basic. It has an image of the four girls pictured together again against a plain background to make the focus remain on the girls and make them the main feautre of the album. Their name 'Cherish' is in a different font style in a different colour, whilst the album name 'unappreciated'  is in a different font. Both fonts are in similiar colours of white and grey to keep with the consistency of the grey/white background. The girls are all also wearing black to keep a theme and to not have any bright contrasts as the focus of the album is on each of the members of the band. As the album is also called 'unappreciated', by having a mid close-up of each of the girls this creates a sense of vulnerability within the girls and therefore matches the album title. For my ancillary tasks, I will need to include elements which relate to our band name 'Kandy Rayn' and I have established that these will be bright colours and the use of lollipops.

 

In contrast, their second album 'THE TRUTH' shows all four girls pictured together with quite an urban/hip-hop look which portrays their image and genre of music which is a combinaiton of R 'n' B and Hip-Hop.  The girls are dressed quite street/hip-hop to coincide with the urban background theme. The band name is kept within the same font maintaining the house-style and is also in red to stand out against the black and white image of the girls against the urban background. The name of the album is in white and a different font style to contrast against the band name. The girls may have deliberately used a black and white image with a more edgy street look to appeal to a wider audience as they feel it shows versatility and displays the girls' personalities.

Example four:

The self-titled debut album by JLS pictured above is very simple. JLS are a boy band consisting of four band members so therefore it is useful to gain a broader perspective on how they produce their album covers in order to appeal to a mass audience. Their album is similar to Cherish's debut album 'Unappreciated' and just has a mid close-up of each of the members on the front. The image has been changed to black and white in order for their name JLS, to stand out in white along with their individual colours that they represent which are placed in order of how they are standing underneath their name. This reinforces how they are unique and represent an individual colour just like the girls in our band do. They may have decided to keep this album simple as it is their debut album and once they become more recognized, they may feel more comfortable with going for a more edgier look and experimenting new ideas.

Overall, I can conclude that the majority of existing bands use vibrant colours on the front to appeal to their audience. Although this may not always be the case, the image can sometimes be changed to black with particular elements standing out like the title of the album, the name of the band and any other features that the band may have such as their individual colours. This is done as an attractive and unique feature to appeal to the target audience. As the bands I've used above also have a target audience of young teens and young adults, the bright colours represent youth and energy and thus they relate to the target audience.