Looking at an album cover: Speak Now - Taylor Swift

For my album cover, I have chosen to do Speak Now by Taylor Swift. It is personally one of my favourites as I love the actual album and the album art too, especially the inside album sleeve. Above is the front and back of the album cover, showing her in a MLS and LS wearing flowy purple and yellow dresses. This connotes a princess-y pretty theme, which a lot of her music is about: she often has lyrics about fairytales and meeting your prince charming. For example, one of her songs on the album is called 'Enchanted' and another song on her previous album was called 'Love Story', showing the continuation of the theme running through. This fairytale theme has also been shown by the fonts used: a slightly italic, soft and curly handwriting typeface. On the front cover she looks beautiful, but the photo itself is 'girl-pretty' and not 'guy-pretty', which appeals to her target audience: teenage girls. Teenage girls aspire to be her and think of her as a great idol and role model: she doesn't drink, smoke or swear, and this artist image has been shown through this cover. The fact that she looks beautiful but not sexy in a long flowey dress shows her innocence and beauty, targeting her core audience.

This is her third album (after Taylor Swift and Fearless), and this is a reason why this album is slightly 'safer'. The photo is a mid long shot, compared to her previous two albums of a close up of her face, and this is because at this point in her career she is a famous established artist with a huge fan base.
Also, if you look at all her albums, she always has her 'Taylor Swift' logo in that same font, and this has been used on all her websites, for all her merchandise; showing synergy and branding between them all.

Below I've added the images from the inside sleeve of her album, which may be some of my favourite album art. The whole album art all have that fantasy princessy theme, with flowy art and golden photo frames in the corners. All the images are very literal and match the meanings of the songs, for example on the page with the lyrics for Speak Now she has a photo of her ruining a wedding and 'speaking now' (instead of forever holding her peace).
Taylor is also known for writing songs about ex boyfriends and previous relationships, so there is a code which Taylor uses to her fans. In the album art where they add the lyrics to the songs, all the lyrics are written in lower case, with a few capitalised letters. If you read all the capital letters in the song, it actually spells out a meaning, sometimes the name of the boy that the song is about. These secret codes within the lyrics have actually been in all of her previous albums, adding a link between all her music, and a link between her and her fans.

Finally, just on a last note, she is releasing a perfume soon called 'Wonderstruck' and the first teaser advert for it actually came out yesterday. The advert continues the same fairytale magical theme running through Speak Now, and features the song 'Enchanted'. This shows the synergy and branding of the album, further enhancing the theme and advertising it to her target audience.