Main Task: Front Cover Textual Analysis

Denotation
This Magazine cover has a colour photograph of a women looking directly into the camera but with her body facing away from it. It has a mid shot showing her head, arms and just above her waist. From what I can see she look like she is standing up. This image is used in a classic way, she really stands out on the page and is making direct eye contact (direct address). The background of the photograph is white, the photograph covers most of the magazine cover. Surrounding the picture are a number of cover-lines in two different shades of red, which are of various sizes and in sans serif font. Behind Amy in the top left hand corner is the masthead 'SPIN'. The photographed women's name is in big bold dark red letters 'AMY WINEHOUSE'. A bar code is placed on the bottom right of the front cover.





Masthead
SPIN masthead is in white letters with a red box behind it. The font used is a serif font. In the early days of the magazine, it was noted for its broad music coverage. The magazine was electric and bold. Spin magazine always used newer artists such as Prince, Run DMC, the Beastie Boys and many more on its covers, as well as lengthy features on Bob Dylan, Keith Richards, Miles Davis and John Lee Hooker-Bart Bull's article on John won the magazine its first ever major award.

The Magazine started to put black artists on the cover but it was considered as a risk and damaging newsstand slaes. This Masthead is short and simple. It is a very universal magazine comapred to magazines such as NME and Q.

Character
The cover photograph is of a very successful English singer-songwriter 'Amy Winehouse'. She is known for her very strong and powerful soul voice and electrical mix of soul, jazz and R'n'B. Her 2003 debut album, Frank was very successful in the UK and was nominated for a mercury prize. In 2006 she had a follow up album, Back to Black, which led to six Grammy award nominations and she won five of them. She was the only female artist to win the most awards in one night and made Amy the first British female to win five grammys including three of the 'big four': best new artist, record of the year and song of the year.

On February 14 2007 Amy won a BRIT award for best for the best British female artist. She was also nominated for best British album. She also won the Ivor Novello award, three times one in 2004 for best contemporary song, one in 2007 for best contemporary song and one in 2008 for best song musically and lyrically. The album is the biggest seller of the 2000s in the United Kingdom. Amy Winehouse is credited as an influence in the rise in popularity of female musicians and soul music and also for revitalising British music.


Mise en scene

Lighting

The lighting is high-key lighting and it is coming from the left and shining on one side of her leaving the other side dark, which connotes that she might have a dark side to her or something to do with her personal life.

Costume
Amy's outfit is a leopard print dress showing a bit of cleavage. Her costume was specifically chosen to appeal to the target audience of the magazine, who are most likely to be both male and female age of 16 and up. I think men would look at it because of the tattoos but women would look at it because she was such a big inspiration to people. Her tattoos and big hair completes the look and also connotes that she likes to have a good time.

NVC
Her arms are by her side. Her mouth is open slightly which draws attention to her redish/pinkish lips and white teeth.

Setting
There is not much of a setting just a plain white background which makes Amy Winehouse stand out more.

Props

Anchorage
The font has no flick ups which connotes a more modern font.

Cover-lines
The main cover line is relater to the picture and says " Amy Winehouse: The dangerous new queen of soul". This is stating her powerful voice which is like no other. Their are many cover lines spread around the page. The different cover-lines tell us that the magazine doesn't just focus on one genre of music, like rap, rock and other genres, also doesn't just focus on music. The artists mentioned on the cover are Amy Winehouse, 50Cent and white stripes.
Also features from Patton Oswalt a stand up comedian, careers counseling from Scott Weiland.

Main cover-line
The main cover line is larger that all the other cover lines. It is taking up almost a quater of the magazine cover. It promotes the artist as current.

Target audience
Considering all of these points, I think the likely target audience would be both male and female, but mostly female from age 16 and up. The younger generation would have good knowledge of the more current artistsuch as Amy Winehouse and 50 Cent, where as the older generation would have better knowledge of older artists like White Strips, Run DMC and Prince.