Task 2 - Album cover analysis: Gabrielle Alplin - English Rain

This album cover is very simple, consisting only of an extreme long shot of the singer in what looks to be a flat piece of grass land holding a colourful umbrella in the air. This links in well to the album title ‘English Rain’.
The background is black and white and the singer and umbrella are in colour because they are the only significant subjects on the album cover. As they are only small it was vital that they made her stand out and they achieved this by the contrast between the black and white background and her. The black and white background perhaps relates to the dullness of English weather, grey and drizzly, but then we see a spring of colour that is the artist herself which manages to light up the whole cover. There is nothing in the background to distract away from her. I personally think that this simplicity adds a sense of beauty to the album cover, the phrase less is more definitely applies here.
The text telling us the name of the artist ‘Gabrielle Aplin’ is all in capitals and in a basic font to correspond with the simplicity of the cover. The large black text stands out the black and white background suggesting that her name is the most important aspect of the cover.  She is a fairly new artist so people may not recognise her face, and instead I think she just wants everyone to know her name. Her music doesn’t sell for her image, it sells for the music.
. The title of the album ‘English Rain’, however, is in a more elegant handwriting style of font, almost as if it has been written personally by the artist. The font makes this album cover more elegant which parallels with the graceful pose of the artist as she dances in the rain.
The simple theme continues to the back of the album, it’s just a black and white shot of the same area where the image was taken on the front of the cover.  Unlike the front there is no colour that stands out. This is because they want you to read the titles of the songs available on this album. It wasn’t necessary to add anything more because its purpose is to tell you what’s on the album, not to attract you to it which is the purpose of the front cover.
The back of the cover also includes small print stating the name of the record label, a website, copyright infringements and also a bar code.

By Emily Driscoll