Album Cover Research Articles

Are heavy metal fans sexist? The relationship between metal music depicting misogynistic violence and sexism

An exploratory study was conducted to investigate the relationship between heavy metal music and sexism based on metal subgenre preferences, lyrical preferences, artwork preferences and associated consumer behaviours. Previous literature has been inconsistent in defining the relationship between music, lyrics and sexism. Data was collected from 423 fans of heavy metal music including their subgenre, lyrical and album cover content preferences, affective responses to lyrics and album artwork, and intended consumer behaviours respective to metal music with misogynistic themes. It was found that the style of metal music preferred by listeners, including specific subgenres of styles associated with misogynistic themes like death metal, was unrelated to sexism. Hostile sexism was higher among those that preferred lyrics and imagery depicting misogynistic violence. Those higher in hostile sexism experienced more positive and less aversive emotions in response to both lyrics and imagery that depicted misogynistic violence, and they reported being more likely to buy albums, clothing, wear clothing and hang posters in their homes that depicted misogynistic violence. This provides evidence that enjoyment of specific styles of metal music is not associated with sexism, but there may be a subgroup of more sexist individuals that are especially drawn to lyrics and images depicting misogynistic violence in heavy metal.

A SEMIOTIC EVALUATION OF COVER IMAGES OF THE TEN MOST HELD TURKISH POP MUSIC ON THE 2021 SPOTIFY LIST

Semiotics, or semiotics as it is commonly known, is an interdisciplinary research field that examines the sign strings of studies in many fields such as music, sociology and linguistics. Today, semiotics, which makes metaphorical analysis of various disciplinary fields such as literature, art, music and cinema and has a wide range as a field of study, has been an important communication tool in this sense. The science of semiotics, which has both a principled and free movement environment due to its multidisciplinary structure, has explained objects, figures and situations in this way by revealing the meaning and establishing a connection with the place of that meaning in society. Among these fields, especially in music, graphic designs used in the creation of album covers, concert posters, posters have an important role in conveying the message that the musical product wants to convey. In this research, it is aimed to make a semiotic analysis of the cover images of the ten most listened songs in the field of Turkish pop music in the Spotify 2021 list. Within the scope of the purpose of the study, cover images were evaluated semiotically in terms of elements such as writing styles, color preferences, use of figures and objects. In this case, questions such as how the current album cover designs examined are, what kind of differences they have with the album covers of the past, how the effects, colors, figures, etc. used in the design of the album covers are, whether the album covers are meaningfully compatible with the title of the album. According to this analysis, ten cover images determined by scanning reliable sites on the internet were reached. The covers were analyzed semiotically in four groups with the criteria of object, human, digital photograph and color under the elements of signified and signifier according to the sign method created by F. Saussure. In addition to these examinations, the content of the lyrics in the albums was also evaluated and it was determined whether they were meaningfully compatible with the album title and cover image. In the light of the evaluations made, it has been concluded that some of the album covers are compatible with the name of the album and some are not. It has been observed that the design of the album covers is influenced by the general fashion sense of the global music industry, and for this reason, they are far from the old album covers in terms of design and meaning.

파라텍스트로써의 앨범커버 연구

This study focuses on the implicit and metaphorical communication of musical messages on album covers and discusses the ultimate role of album covers: the visual communication of music. For this purpose, first of all, the album cover is examined from the point of view of music and listener's interface, and the function of the album cover as paratext is examined. Album covers have the effect of creating a new experience for the listener, drawing attention to the shared properties of music and image through the image on the cover. In this sense, the album cover acts as a paratextual representation of a text as another text, creating a place for new interpretations to emerge. Based on this, I analyze the changes in the Beatles' musical style reflected in their album covers in relation to their genres and works. Through this study, it is expected that new musical thinking will be established through convergence with visuals, recognizing that album covers, which are visual materials, are also important materials that make up music.

앨범커버와 음악의 융합

We can have a “musical” experience through an “album cover” that does not contain any musical symbols, does not make any sounds, and is just a photograph, a work of art. Album covers are a new musical realm created by the musical collaboration of artists and musicians. You experience music through the album cover that you encounter first, and the music experienced through sight is now interpreted through sound. The importance of the album cover cannot be overlooked as it acts as a visual hook for the music. This study examines the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band from two perspectives: the album cover and the music, and discusses how the music is reflected in the album cover. Through the close connection between the music and the album cover, this paper focuses on the importance of the album cover as a work of art and its role in establishing its own domain separate from other arts.

Analysis of Indie Album Covers and Posters from a Semiotic Perspective with Sample Design Application

Dünya tarihinde insan ve sanat birlikte şekillenmiştir. Varlığını anlamlandırmak isteyen insan doğayı izlemiş, dinlemiş ve bu deneyimlerini başkalarına aktarmıştır. Bu aktarımların en kadim olanı sestir. Yazının icadına kadar olan geniş bir tarih süresince âdetler, kültür ve hatta bilgi nesilden nesile sadece ses yoluyla aktarılmıştır. İnsan sese varoluşundan bu yana anlamlar yükleyerek hayatın her alanına katmıştır. İnsan geliştikçe ses bilgisi de şekillenmiş ve onu kaydederek diğer insanlara aktarmaya başlamıştır. Böylelikle müzik plakları, kasetler, CD’ler doğmuştur. İşte bu noktada varlığını tarihi boyunca sanatla şekillendiren insan tasarımdan faydalanmaya başlamıştır. En eski basılı müzik kayıtlarından en son dijital sürümlere kadar kapak tasarımı müziğin nasıl algılandığı, pazarlandığı ve tüketildiği konusunda çok önemli bir rol oynamıştır. Tasarım müziğin içerisinde yer almasa da müziği geliştirip tüm dünyada görünür hâle getirmiştir. Bu araştırmada Indie müziğin ortaya çıkardığı grafik anlatımların içerdiği imgelerin, müzik gruplarına ait olan albüm kapak tasarımları ve afiş tasarımları baz alınarak göstergebilim açısından incelemeleri aracılığıyla tasarımlarda kullanılan göstergelerin çözümlemesi amaçlanmıştır. Bu amaca dönük sanatçılar amaçsal örneklem seçim tekniği ile seçilmiştir. İlk olarak tasarım kavramı ele alınmış, daha sonra da Indie müzik kültürünün oluşumu, tarihi ve müziğine yer verilmiştir. Indie müziğin insanların üzerindeki etkisi ve etkilendiği sanat akımlarıyla tasarım süreci incelenmiştir. Son olarak bu incelemeler doğrultusunda kurgusal bir Indie müzik grubu oluşturularak albüm kapağı ve konser afişi tasarlanmıştır.

Great gaffe in the sky

Tom Tierney turns the famous album cover into a classroom physics exercise.

Rosalía's Butterflies: Self-Reflective Celebrity and the Confessional Text

Abstract: In this essay, I examine Rosalía's Motomami (2022) as a confessional text in which the artist speaks openly about her feelings and reflects on being a celebrity and her relationship with audiences. Music critics immediately noted that it departs from the formula of her previous flamenco-based albums and praised its experimentation and combination of multiple genres. The symbol of the butterfly that appears on the album cover, in the lyrics of the first track ("Saoko"), and on Rosalía's dental grills represents this transformation. But perhaps the biggest change has to do with the intimate tone of the entire album, as Rosalía confesses her struggles, fears, and desires. As Foucault shows in the History of Sexuality , confession has been a central ritual in the discursive production of truth in Western societies. Prominent celebrity studies scholars such as Sean Redmond have noted that the confessional address has become pervasive in contemporary celebrity culture, since it is almost mandatory as a promotional strategy to brand the celebrity persona and do damage control in the case of waning stars. Rosalía's confession is striking because it is played out not only in the lyrics of Motomami but also through the musical features. Most songs have a minimalist composition, with few instrumentals that are filtered and devoid of high frequencies to allow for Rosalía's vocal delivery to stand out. And it is often a bare voice that appears in contrast to aggressive drums to convey the hostile environment Rosalía has faced in the last few years.

Cathedral of Power: Battersea Power Station in Dystopian Visual Culture

Cathedral of Power: Battersea Power Station in Dystopian Visual Culture

Songs in the Key of Life

Songs in the Key of Life

Semiotika Makna Pesan Cover Album PErmission to Dance Boyband BTS

The purpose of this study was to understand the Semiotics of the Meaning of the Album Cover “Permission to Dance” by Boyband BTS. The theory used is Charles Sanders Peirce's Theory of Semiotics. As for Research methods used on this research is Semiotic Analysis with qualitative approach. The results of the study found that each visible sign on the album cover has a deep meaning, not only does it show the bright colors such as orange, purple, black, blue, and even the writing font, the shapes, they were an icon that symbolize meaning which could be interpret differently, depending on who, whom or whose see and read the meaning behind. BTS tried to send message through their album, not just the music, even the cover of the album is full of symbols with meanings.

Folk and Fantasy: Colonial Imaginations of Caribbean Culture in Mid-Century Calypso Album Cover Art

This article explores the reflections of Caribbean culture found in mid-century calypso album cover art. Calypso cover art offers important documentations of Caribbean folk life and cultural identity pre-independence, but at the same time, facilitate the exportation of colonial fantasies about local life to attract tourists. The images examined invariably construct Caribbean islands as “places to play” (Sheller, 2003) and its people as carefree and even childish natives. We use semiotics and critical visual analysis to analyze mid-century record album cover characterizations of the primordial rhythm of folk life and caricatures of native culture, as well as the ways touristic esthetics adapted Calypso, including the figure of the Coconut Woman, as a soundtrack for colonial fantasies and fuel for the colonial gaze. This article reveals how minor, even peripheral, objects such as Calypso records promoted as fun and festive consumer goods reveal powerful, yet relatively unnoticed, insights into visual communication.

The pragmatics and Semiotics Analysis of Vinyl Record Cover Art They Fell From The Sky's Album DECADE

In this study, the researchers focus on the meaning of the DECADE album cover from They Fell From The Sky music band. This was chosen because the artwork used is quite attractive and has This study uses qualitative research with a descriptive method. The analysis was carried out using the semiotic theory of Roland Barthes and the pragmatics theory of John Searle. This study aimed to determine the meaning contained in the cover design of the DECADE album. This research shows that between context signs and visible signs, there is a relationship where the two synergize in the title. The band, namely "They Fell From The Sky," by using a skull image that uses an astronaut costume in an iconic, denotative, and connotative symbolizing "death," a form of death because "falling from the sky" so the message to be conveyed is to publish the Decade album which for ten years or "a decade" like struggling until astronauts in outer space experience death as if falling from the sky. The Astronaut's skull artwork entitled in Indonesian "Binasa" ("Perish" in English) which is the basis of the DECADE album cover design, also strengthens this interpretation. Keywords: Album cover, Semiotics, Pragmatics.

Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov

Reviewed by: Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov Ellis Shuman Georgi Gospodinov Time Shelter Trans. Angela Rodel. New York. Liveright. 2022. 304 pages. THE PROTAGONIST OF the novel Time Shelter reads a newspaper article describing a geriatrics doctor who “decked out his office in the style of the ’60s,” complete with a gramophone and a poster of the famous Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover. The doctor noted, the article said, that when visiting his office, patients with memory issues “became more talkative, in other words, they felt at home.” “That was my idea,” claims the protagonist, a writer of fiction. “I’ve had it in my head for years, but clearly somebody beat me to it.” He envisions a story in which he meets a fictional geriatrics doctor named [End Page 71] Gaustine, creating with him a “clinic for the past” for patients suffering from memory loss. Rooms are prepared with scents and settings from different decades providing relief for the varied memory ailments from which the patients suffered. The author takes this concept to a larger scale. As detailed in the next part of the novel, memories of better times lead European citizens across the continent to hold referendums in which they vote on which past they should return to in order to solve their nation’s particular woes in the present day. After considering the results of these national referendums, the protagonist returns to the homeland of his own past, Bulgaria. Seeing a giant Bulgarian flag pulled by three hundred drones across the sky, watching a thundering horo dance, and smelling the scent of roasted peppers at dusk all provide him with an opportunity to place his visions of fictitious Gaustine in perspective. At times satirical, at others philosophical, the novel Time Shelter is written in Georgi Gospodinov’s unique “anarchic and experimental” style, as the New Yorker described his debut book, Natural Novel. Time Shelter is not as fragmented as the author’s second novel, The Physics of Sorrow, but its nonlinear plot may not appeal to all readers. The underlying theme in Time Shelter is whether our memories of the past, real or imagined, can protect us from the temporal chaos outside our daily lives. In real life, memories may not shield us from that chaos, but in Gospodinov’s imagination, anything is possible. Ellis Shuman Neve Ilan, Israel Copyright © 2022 World Literature Today

Does the typeface on album cover influence expectations and perception of music?

Does the typeface on album cover influence expectations and perception of music?

The Representation of Society Criticism on Meme (Semiotic Analysis of Charles Sanders Pierce on Politician Billboard Memes)

This research aims to discover the meaning of three previously selected memes that highlight the practice of placing billboards for Indonesian politicians outside of the 2024 presidential election campaign using semiotic analysis from Charles Sanders Pierce with a descriptive qualitative approach. The three memes that are the subject of this research are three memes that have a high virality value and are included in Twitter's Trending Topics. The findings of this research show that the three memes have a negative attitude against the action of placing political billboards. These negative viewpoints are summed up in four key points that emerge from the three memes, namely (1) Criticism of installing billboards for politicians that are excessive in number and placement, (2) Criticism of the unimportance of installing billboards by politicians compared to other issues that are also being viral in the world. Twitter, (3) Criticism of the lack of empathy of politicians towards people who are experiencing economic difficulties in the midst of the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic and (4) Criticism of politicians who only want to advertise themselves. In addition, the use of signs in the memes studied uses general signs that are close to the Indonesian people as well as things that are going viral close to the viral billboard phenomenon, such as The Beatles Album Cover, Tinder Dating App Logo, footballer Lionel Messi.

Patterns of pop

Although the images on the front of album covers contribute to a multimodal experience of popular music, they have up until now rarely been used as a historiographical source. This article aims to add this visual dimension to the historiography of popular music in the GDR by investigating visual patterns within a corpus of 105 album covers produced in the German Democratic Republic between 1964 and 1990 and by comparing them to Western album covers from the same period. Following a theoretical introduction, the political, economic and technological contexts of record production and album cover design in the GDR are described. Inspired by visual discourse analysis and social semiotics, a comparative corpus analysis approach focuses on the depiction of persons, settings and objects on the album covers as well as on their general visual design. The results suggest both a specific visual language that is peculiar to album covers in the GDR and an encompassing transnational imagery of popular music.

Portraying Performer Image in Record Album Cover ArtKenBielen. Lexington Books, 2022.

The Journal of American CultureVolume 45, Issue 2 p. 222-223 Book Review Portraying Performer Image in Record Album Cover Art Ken Bielen. Lexington Books, 2022. Scott R. Stalcup, Corresponding Author Scott R. Stalcup [email protected] Northern Illinois UniversitySearch for more papers by this author Scott R. Stalcup, Corresponding Author Scott R. Stalcup [email protected] Northern Illinois UniversitySearch for more papers by this author First published: 25 June 2022 https://doi.org/10.1111/jacc.13374Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume45, Issue2June 2022Pages 222-223 RelatedInformation

Impact Factors on K-pop Album Cover Design and Image Production from 1994 to 2002: The Sociopolitical and Economic Dimensions of Design Context

Impact Factors on K-pop Album Cover Design and Image Production from 1994 to 2002: The Sociopolitical and Economic Dimensions of Design Context

When “grass was greener”*: Longplay Album Covers and Learning English. A Retrospection

This paper brings together several important threads accounting for learning English as a foreign language, that is, language learning experience, material culture as an element of this experience as well as a component of the learning environment, motivation and music. Material culture has recently attracted the attention of researchers interested in foreign/second language learning and multilingualism because it provides a rich context for many multilingual practices. Longplay album covers are an excellent example of artefacts that combine the verbal with the material. Music and songs, pop songs in particular, are an important motivating factor in learning languages.The aim of this paper is to share with the reader the author and her generation’s encounters with pop music of the 1960s, focusing on language learning experience based on the material aspects of these encounters, that is, longplay record covers. The paper, then, is the author’s personal reflection based on her own experience as well as on the multiple discussions she has had with friends and colleagues whose teenage years spanned the 1960s. Also connections between music and language learning are discussed along with suggestions of activities capitalizing on learners’ interest in music in the teaching process.

Going “There”: Black Visual Satire

Going “There”: Black Visual Satire