Florence and the Machine "Lungs" analysis

This album artwork belongs to that of Florence and the Machine’s “Lungs”. Florence and the Machine are an indie pop band but other various genres such as soul and rock are sometimes put to their name. They are best known for their album “Lungs” and singles “Dog Days Are Over”, “Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)” and “You’ve Got The Love”.

   The main image seen on the front of this album cover is of Florence herself. She is positioned in a effeminate manner with her eyes looking down, suggesting and empowering the elegance and femininity of her music. The naturalistic theme of the background gives an innocent look to Florence adding to this feminine theme. The lungs that can be seen on Florence not only denote the album title but also represent the powerful, breathtaking voice that Florence is known for, producing intertextuality between the CD cover and the CD itself. Lungs are a vital organ and within this piece of artwork they work with the nature background to create an additional theme of life and purity. The lungs can be seen very boldly upon Florence as she looks away, this suggests that the lungs are something that makes Florence a very powerful character and they are almost being protected by the thin lace like top that Florence wears. Furthermore, it could be suggested that the top connotes the strings that accompany her voice, the strings and lungs together making music. An idea that we could produce here is using an object or postioning people in a way that connotes the intruments in the music we are using, for example: positioning people in an air guitar movement. This will give people a direct clue to the genre.

   “Florence + the Machine” is written in a very childlike, feminine way across the top of the artwork. The font adds to the innocent and naturalistic atmosphere of the album cover, appearing in a handwritten, shaped in an almost floral way. This again symbolises purity. 

 This is the back of the album cover. There is a clear difference between this and the front of the album artwork, with the front being very colourful and bold photograph and the back being a cold illustration. The background image is a detailed diagram of a pair of lungs; it is directly related back to the album title “Lungs”. The illustration is annotated with numbers which is used as the track listing. This is an unusual way of approaching this; however the quirkiness very much supports their indie genre. Overall the back of the cover reminds me of an x-ray image. The insight into the pair of lungs representing the insight into their music. 

    The inside booklet contains photos of Florence on the right and a song title with a few lyrics from that song on the left. The feminine and classy pictures of Florence show a sense of female empowerment about the band as she is the only person featured in the photos. By having lyrics printed on the left hand side it shows that Florence is passionate about her music and each picture may hold a hidden meaning to that lyric. They layout of the booklet also connotes the front and back cover of the album artwork, with black and white colours used for the lyrics and bold colour used for the pictures of Florence.     The powerful theme of femininity in this video will definitely be used when producing our album cover, the main reason behind this being that the band we are using feactures a strong female lead vocalist, as this is an unsual factor within bands nowadays we want to promote this in a very positive way. One way in which we can do this include: feacturing the female on the front with a clear message that she is the lead singer, having a feminine theme without the whole album cover to support this.