Album Cover Analysis (U.S.)

Styles p’s album is a hardcore rap album which consists tracks from various artists such as D Block’s Jadakiss and Sheek Louch. Since the album is of the hardcore rap genre the cover resembles some of the conventions we would expect to hear the artist talk about in his lyrics. The album symbolises a lot of the rap culture for example if we look closely at the album cover we could see a police car with the sirens flashing, this can symbolise the position the police hold in the rap genre (negative position). The album cover also has an establishing shot of New York which represents where the artist is located as many artists use this technique to represent where they are from. The font, styles and size used is very bold with an ‘in your face’ type of look; this is so that the artist can attract the audiences attention as much as possible so that the artist can gain potential sales, to make it more eye-catching the colours in the cover is in contrast with one another, one colour is dark whilst the other is bright. Also the album background looks somewhat distorted and scruffy which could have been done to show the roughness of New York as well as showing a police car with the sirens on to show that New York is heavily involved with crime that the sirens are always on.

Katy Perry is a pop artist which means the genre of her music is pop with sub genres in her album for e.g. pop-rock, Electropop etc. Katy Perry’s album colour shows juxtaposition between genders, this is shown by the title of her album and the way the images show the opposite. The title of her album is ‘one of he boys’ but when you look at the album cover it is very feminine for e.g. the album image shows a bright pink blanket as well as flowers which is not very ‘macho’. The album cover also shows Katy Perry in a seductive position, this could have been to do with the intentions of to seduce the male audience as a majority of Katy Perry’s audience is females which means she may want to expand her audience with a roundabout technique. Although it may look natural the sky in the cover looks like storm clouds as well as their being gates/fence behind her as if to say that she’s trapped in something, this could represent her being stuck/trapped in a hard relationship (stormy clouds) as most of her tracks talk about relationships she’s been through or problems that may be found in a relationship for e.g. one of her tracks ‘hot n cold’ talks about how her male partner gets cold feet during their wedding. 

Eminem Recovery album is a comeback album by Marshall Mather’s A.K.A ‘Eminem’. The album cover has many representations in it such as Eminem in a glass-like structure almost making it look as if he is locked up in a glass cage with buildings in the background looking as if the people inside are looking over him and watching what he is doing, this could be a reference to his personal life as Eminem is an artist which likes to correlate his album cover with his personal life. To further prove that this can reflect his personal life is by listening to one of his tracks named ’25 to life’ where Eminem talks about his life in the rap industry where he finds it hard to come out from which can explain the glass cage. Also the clouds in the sky of the album cover looks as if it is storm clouds which can reflect the hard ships in Eminem’s life. It could also be represented as, the people which is observing Eminem, is protecting Eminem from the storm (his hardships) as long as he stays in the glass cage (under observation/control).