First CD Album Analysis

The CD image is by one of the artist's videos that I evaluated earlier on, this artist is Alecia Moore or better known by her stage name Pink. She has released a total of five albums however I am looking at her latest one called Funhouse as I feel that it will represent the trends of CD covers better than the other four due to being the closest one to date. This in turn will help me with ideas on how I should style the image for my own artist.

Firstly I'm looking at the colour if the album which is simply two colours for the background being gold and red which are the colours that Pink's clothes are. The only different colour on the front cover is the white horse which stands out from the rest. The colours almost contradict each other as red is a colour for anger or sexual desires yet white is a sign of purity thus Pink is almost using the colours to fit with her personality that she is known for. As I mentioned in the music videos Pink rebels against most view points and uses her own ideology which I feel she is also doing with her album cover thus showing the rebel that people love about the female. However the colours are also seen as a fairground and the house would be seen on the merry go round thus it could just fit with the album title which is funhouse, just like the merry go round a funhouse would be in a fairground thus the colours used may signify this factor.

Pinks outfit also fits this fairground theme as she is wearing the typical showgirl type outfit who would be near a circus in a fairground that contains clowns which funnily enough is mentioned a lot in one of her songs with the same name "used to be a funhouse but now it's full of evil clowns" I believe that this album cover was designed especially for the song Funhouse which is the same title as the album as well as having the colours and clothes match the theme. Although there are no images whatsoever of any clowns on or in the album which may suggest that this isn't the reason for the design, however I do like the idea of matching the song with the album cover in some way as the audience can then relate to both the song and the album thus will be more likely to buy it. There is another song on the album called crystal ball which again fits with the whole fairground theme.

The artist is shown on the horse with an arm and a leg in the arm possibly showing her enjoyment of fun that she is hinted at having by her facial expression. Her position allows the audience to view the whole cover as you are instantly attracted to the white horse and then Pink yet her leg also takes your eyes into the top left of image showing you everything. This will help my group by allowing us to write ideas on what our CD could include and techniques that we could use. The shot of Pink is shown from the side although you can pretty much see all that you need to by the left side of the artist such as her emotions, her position, what she is doing and what she is wearing.

The only words on the cover are the artists name and the title of the album which I feel is a statement simply saying this is her album and that's really all you need to know. A lot of other artists use this technique however a few have been known to write a phrase or a title that doesn't match the album yet this is commonly seen by artists who are quite famous or well known at the time thus for our artist we should stick to just the name and album title.

Overall from what I can see from this album the ideas that she gives are the following:

To use the artist as a main focus point so that the audience will know who they are as they may only hear the song on the radio thus is allows the audience to connect with the singer. To use only a few colours so that no distraction is taken away from the artist. Have the title of the song or some relation to the song on the front cover e.g. the horse links to a fairground and the song title is the album title.

I personally like the album cover for its simplicity as it attracts the audience without too much effort although I do feel that she could of used possibly a better picture then her on the horse as it is connected with a fairground yet I feel that maybe a clown would have been a better choice or something along those lines. I do feel that a clown would take the attention away from Pink yet at the same time attract different types of people who maybe wouldn't go for a female artist. For example an early twenties male, this idea on the other hand could backfire and lose sales. I have learnt from this that I will need to evaluate every decision on the album before agreeing to it as one false move could decide the albums success.