Analysis of an Album Cover Rough Draft Due: Final Draft Due:
Description: Album covers are a chance for artists to set the stage for their music, to convey a key to understanding the tone and meaning of their thesis and songs. As Michael Renaud, the creative director for Pitchfork, said, The album cover remains a powerful factor in how we make sense of a record—whether it’s presented via gatefold vinyl or shrunk all the way down to fit on your smartphone screen,” The ability to critically read and interpret visual images, both their overt and subtle messages, enables us to draw meaning from them in ways not necessarily obvious to the passive observer. In this essay, you will analyze an album cover to gain a better understanding of the artist’s musical intentions and the ways it might carry cultural meaning under its surface. You’ll be analyzing your album cover by breaking it down into components, looking for relationships between those components (color, text, pictures, etc.) understanding how each component contributes to the obvious and subtle messages of the album and drawing conclusions about their significance.
Guidelines: Pick an album cover that has a complexity that would work for an in depth analysis. Some covers may be too simplistic or straightforward to require much interpretation. The album cover may include a visual image combined with written text.
Writing Issues: • Analyzing visual images and written text. Relate the album cover to the songs on the album. • Considering both the explicit and implied meanings and messages of the album cover and how they are communicated. • Include any information from the artist, or other credible sources about the album cover. • Analyze how the cover prepares the audience for the music. Think about who its target audience is and what it’s saying about the musical genre. • Describing the album so that your readers can see what you see. • Figuring out a structure for your paper that will enable you to talk about all of these component parts.