Star image

Star image

A star image is vital for any musician, as this is what's going to sell their brand. How they're viewed will determine their target audience and who relates with them as people, almost separately to their music. My favourite musicians by far are The Beatles, and all though I just missed the peak of Beatlemania in the mid 60s, I can definitely understand why it happened. 

Analysing an album cover

The Beatles have so many iconic album covers, such as Abbey Road or Revolver, but I thought id analyse their second album "With The Beatles" as I believe throughout their almost ten years of being a group, their image split into two, early (think mop-tops, 50s style rock and roll, and black suits) and late Beatles, (think psychedelic hippie, and Indian influence).

This album cover is one of their earliest, and we can see their beginning image start to show. The black and white is striking and shows how new and exciting this revolutionary group will be. Only half their faces are really visible, so people will start to recognise them, but the other half in a shadow shows them to be a bit mysterious and nothing people have seen before.  We see all their matching mop top hair styles which was actually a form of rebellion, as people in the 60s would consider this very long hair, which wouldn't be very respectable for young men. They're also dressed in black, making their faces stand out, where teenage girls especially can get to know them as people. And as intimidating as they tried to look, John Lennon (top left) still has a little bit of a grin, and matching with the wonky, all lowercase, small font at the top, we can see that these boys are a bit cheeky and don't take themselves too seriously. 

The Beatles star image

There are so many reasons The Beatles managed to become the most famous band in the world, and here are a few:

A common phrase any Beatles fan would hear is that they were "Just four lads from Liverpool". Being four ordinary boys from a northern working class city in England made the odds of them reaching fame seem almost impossible. And that's another reason they had so many fans, because they weren't some posh, manufactured, structured group, they never tried to hide where they were from. Their Scouse accents and witty jokes in interviews showed their charm and how fun they seemed to be.

The Beatles and previous drummer, Pete Best in 1961

Their youth, creativeness and originality helped them on their journey to being the 'Fab Four' group everyone knows, and their work was so versatile, they managed to keep up with, and create, trends. But it was their star image created by their first manager, Brian Epstein that made them so big. They originally wore black leather and sunglasses in the late 50s and early 60s, but Epstein and Paul McCartney suggested they wore smart suits, as that would make them more likely to be excepted by the media.

The Beatles at the Ed Sullivan show 1964 (73 million people watched which was almost half the American population)