Codes and conventions of a pop album cover

From what I have seen, album covers don't really tend to use a very busy background, which gives more focus for the artist on the front cover. Both Katy Perry's and Rihanna's albums seem to use quite a feminine colour scheme, although they are very different to one another. The covers tend to give a vague idea about what music to expect on the album, but generally I think they mainly reflect the artist's personality. Rihanna and Lady Gaga's albums both use a close up on the front cover, whilst Katy Perry's album includes a close up inside the CD. I think this indicates that close ups of artists are quite a big convention of a pop album cover.
For my ancillary task, I think that one of the most important aspects will be using a feminine colour scheme throughout. I will use a close up shot for one of the inserts, but I'd like to do something different for the front cover so will possibly use a mid or full length shot.

Katy Perry - Teenage Dream Album Cover

Using www.allcdcovers.com, I was able to analyse the album over, the track listing on the back cover and the cd insert of different cd's. This is the original CD cover for Katy Perry's most recent album.

The colours in the background are very soft, for example the pastel pink cloud/candyfloss that Katy Perry is pictured lying on, and the pale blue sky. The main focus is on Katy herself, who is right in the centre of the picture. Another reason she stands out is because her dark hair contrasts with the paler colours. There are two titles on the cover, one is just her name in shiny pink and blue writing and the other is the name of the album, "Teenage Dream" which is in white and pink stripy writing, made to look like candy canes. The CD cover is very similar to the video of the first single released from the album, "California Girls". In the video, she is seen sitting on clouds and waking around with big sweets everywhere, for example walking gummy bears. The writing on the cover reflects the sweet theme whilst the picture of Katy is taken from the exact same setting as the video. This style also reflects her personal image which is kind of 1950s, for example, dresses with bold colours and pictures of fruit on them.



This is the back cover of the cd which shows all the songs on the album. The same picture from the front cover is used on the back, but without the picture of Katy Perry on the front, just the list of songs. Again, like the front cover, pink and blue writing is used and the letter 'O' in different words has been replaced with round shaped white & pink sweets. The pale colour scheme and use of sweets used throughout the cd case indicates that Katy Perry is quite feminine and would appeal to young, 'girly' females, as we found in our target audience.



Finally, I looked at the picture inside the cd case and on first impressions it looks very different to the front & back covers. It looks formal and quite royal with the way her hair has been styled and the crown and jewellery that she is wearing, which contrasts with the fun images that I looked at before. However, when you look closer at the picture you can see that the crown and jewellery is actually made up from sweets which again follow the theme from the front and back covers. This picture really conveys a humorous side of Katy Perry which is often seen in her personal life from the media, which I think enables the audience to relate with her & her music.

To see Susan's analysis of Lily Allen's and Lady Gaga's album covers, click here.

Codes and conventions of a pop music video

From analyzing music videos of other artists, its clear to see there are a few similarities between them. The females in the video show a very modern representation of women, for example, in the video for 'Hot n Cold', and the video for 'Tik Tok', both Katy Perry and Kesha are very powerful, independent and confident looking. This is very different to the traditional representation of women as its usually the men who have the power. Both videos are filmed on very sunny days, and the lighting is bright too so the videos look very colourful and vibrant, giving quite a happy feel. There are very few scenes, if any scenes at all in both the videos where only narrative is used. Both videos seem to combine the narrative & performance scenes so the artists are singing throughout the storyline. One difference is that while both videos seem to reflect the meaning of the lyrics (Andrew Goodwin) only Katy Perry's video uses the theory of equilibrium (Todorov).
Both videos use a lot of close ups, especially of the artist when they are singing which shows emotion.

I think in our video, we will use some conventions but won't stick completely to what we have seen. For example, I think we should do some filming on a sunny day, as we want our video to look quite happy. On the other hand, we are going to use some narrative scenes where no performance is used at all.