Textual Analysis of a CD cover // TRXYE

The CD cover I have chosen to analyse is Troye Sivan's EP - TRXYE.

The colours chosen for the CD cover, reflect his style and personality. Troye is also a YouTuber and Actor aswell as a singer appearing as young wolverine in X-Men and also as 'Spud' in the trilogy 'Spud; The movies'.

The pink paint stripe over his face was explained by him in an interview. He said he didn't want people to judge his music on his looks, but more on the sound of his voice, so by covering his eyes people wont judge him. This also goes against how we see the 'gender norms' as pink is not seen as a manly colour, but this is his way of showing how he is different and denies the idea of 'gender norms' as an openly gay man.

Also the 'X' in TRXYE stands for 'more to come' so this wont be his only EP or album.


His CD cover reflects his music style which is pop, but it also has a relaxing feel to it, so he chose colours that stand out but are simple and reflect his relaxed personality.

Halls Reception Theory

Stuart Hall is a cultural theorist born in Jamaica, who worked in the UK from 1951 whilst theorising the encoding and decoding model. Hall often focused on perception and also theorised the Audience Reception theory, which identified 3 different models of reading media texts. I want to link this to Pharrell Williams' 'Happy'..

The three types of reading were named

states that all texts are polysemic (can have multiple meanings)

texts can be read in different ways depending on the audience 

can be read in 3 different ways

1. preferred reading 
- audience responds the way the media producers want them to. So the audience would react happily because the video shows people dancing and singing along to the song, and as a result of having such a happy effect, people recreated the video from diiferent countries around the world.

2 negotiated reading
- the audience partly agrees withe the message but may disagree. The audience can enjoy the video for a short period of time before getting completely annoyed with it and refusing to watch the video or listen to the song at all, whch is what happened with 'happy' because it was so over played.

3. oppositional reading 
- completely disagrees. The audience do not agree with the songs video or message and see it as annoying or wrong. 'Happy' was used for the movie 'Dispicable Me 2' but was not written for the film so they believe the song has no meaning.

Textual analysis of recommended music videos!

Rat Boy - Sign on. This song is bascally an indie band singing about signing on to the dole, the video is the band having fun in a car showing how they act around other people. There are a few edited shots of a bouncy castle which shows their childish side, and how they're not grown up enough, which makes them sign on the dole because they're not mature enough to get a job. the video reflects the song in a metaphorical way.
Olly Murs ft. Demi Lovato - Up. This song is a duet about love between two people. The video shows two people on each side of a brick wall, smashing everything in their path. The man picks up a guitar and smashes it against the wall, causing it to break for them to see each other face to face, which could suggest that music brings them both together.
Demi Lovato - Neon Lights. The music video is very literal and uses a lot neon lighting within the video. The video is set to show a club and the night life style, which reflects the songs style. This song is different to other ones that she has released as she normally goes for simple videos with simple colours so this showed a different side of her.

A textual analysis of music videos.

In our class we watched a few music videos recommended by fellow students.

The first video we watched was 'Up' by Olly Mura feat. Demi Lovato, this video is very effective as it shows two people fighting for love. There is a brick wall between them, separating their love. But Olly picks up a guitar and starts to break down the wall between them, suggesting that music brings them together and they share their love of music with each other, which keeps them together.

The second music video we watched was 'neon lights' by Demi Lovato. This video was suggested because of how unique it was with the colours and how it had never been done before, but there were a few moments in the video that mimicked Kylie Monogues 'spinning around' video, where she lays on a table in a skin tight clothes.

The last video we watched was a video by a band called 5 seconds of summer, and the song called 'Good Girls'. The  video starts off with girls being taken into a reform girls school for 'bad girls' and the band (5sos) are called on because of their classic music vibe to 'sooth' the girls, but as the punk pop song kicks in it sends the girls bad again and the video shows how the music causes the girls to rebel.

I'll Be // Edwin McCain

Textual analysis of a music video.

The music video I have chosen in Edwin McCain - I'll be, which was as featured in the movie 'a Cinderella story' in 2004, the song was released in 1997. 

This song shows evidence of Goodwin's theories as in the beginning of the video, each strum of the guitar signals a new establishing shot of New York City. 

As soon as McCain starts singing, it's cuts to a shot of him in sync with the lyrics.

The lyrics 'emeralds from mountains' signals the shot of a woman standing in front of a patterned glass window which makes it look like diamonds, which supports Goodwin's theory of lyrics matching video.

Also, on certain beats of the song, the shot changes to a different shot completely, which also supports his theory of music matching video.