Semiotic Analysis
The Stone Roses album
was released back in 1989 by Silvertone Records. The guitarist John Squire
created the album cover titled ‘Bye Bye Badman’ that was heavily influenced by
the artist Jackson Pollock who was most famous for his drip styled paintings.
It also features the colours from the French flag and three lemons scattered
across the cover.
Both the iconic French flag and lemons signify a political movement and dominance within a society from the Paris riots back in 1968. It was a period of civil unrest within France where students protested and gathered the largest strike ever attempted that almost caused the collapse of their own president Charles De Gaulle’s. The government responded with aggression in the streets using tear gas on the protesters; ‘Choke me smoke the air, in this citrus sucking sunshine’ is a lyrical reference from the song Bye Bye Badman featured on the album as the students used to carry around lemons to suck as they were an antidote for the effects of the tear gas.
The Jackson Pollock inspired artwork also symbolizes the chaos and extremism from the riots and how the protesters made an impact on the French society. The green and black colours create a visually rebellious atmosphere as Ian Brown and John Squire were influenced by one of the documentaries entitled ‘Revolution Revisited’ which inspired them to write the lyrics for Bye Bye Badman; ‘I'm throwing stones at you man, I want you black and blue and, I'm gonna make you bleed, gonna bring you down to your knees’. The signifiers I believe reflected The Stones Rose’s rebellious attitude within their own country with the rise of Margaret Thatcher; as Britain was recovering from a recession from the early 1980’s it maintained to have high unemployment rate making most working classes standard of living extremely low. The stones album gave the youth of their generation a sense of freewill and enjoyment in the hard economic state.
Both the iconic French flag and lemons signify a political movement and dominance within a society from the Paris riots back in 1968. It was a period of civil unrest within France where students protested and gathered the largest strike ever attempted that almost caused the collapse of their own president Charles De Gaulle’s. The government responded with aggression in the streets using tear gas on the protesters; ‘Choke me smoke the air, in this citrus sucking sunshine’ is a lyrical reference from the song Bye Bye Badman featured on the album as the students used to carry around lemons to suck as they were an antidote for the effects of the tear gas.
The Jackson Pollock inspired artwork also symbolizes the chaos and extremism from the riots and how the protesters made an impact on the French society. The green and black colours create a visually rebellious atmosphere as Ian Brown and John Squire were influenced by one of the documentaries entitled ‘Revolution Revisited’ which inspired them to write the lyrics for Bye Bye Badman; ‘I'm throwing stones at you man, I want you black and blue and, I'm gonna make you bleed, gonna bring you down to your knees’. The signifiers I believe reflected The Stones Rose’s rebellious attitude within their own country with the rise of Margaret Thatcher; as Britain was recovering from a recession from the early 1980’s it maintained to have high unemployment rate making most working classes standard of living extremely low. The stones album gave the youth of their generation a sense of freewill and enjoyment in the hard economic state.
The typeface used is a classic san serif bold font. The burned orange
colour makes an impact and adds vibrancy to the cover that could be a
connotation for hope and excitement within the album. The type as a whole could
also reflect the impact The Stones Rose’s intentions were to have on the
public, appealing to a wide selection of music lovers in society from rockers
to ravers; merging psychedelic and dance grooves.
