BACKGROUNDTaylor Swift is an American singer-songwriter and actress. She was raised in Pennsylvania and moved to Nashville when she was 14 to pursue a career in country music. She signed with the independent label named Big Machine Records and became the youngest songwriter ever hired by the Sony publishing house. When Taylor released her self-titled debut album in 2006 it established her as a country music star. She also received a best new artist nomination at the 2008 Grammy Awards. Taylor’s second album, Fearless was released in 2008. Fearless became the best selling album of 2009 in the USA. The album won four Grammy Awards which made Taylor the youngest artist ever to receive Album of the Year. Both Taylor’s next album Speak Now and Red both sold more than one million copies within the first week of their release in the USA. 1989 was released in 2014 and it sold more copies in its opening week than any other album in the previous 12 years. This made Taylor the first and only act to have three albums sell more than one million copies in the opening release week.

This comes up on the website which is promoting her new single and new video.

The font matches the font that she uses for her world tour. She is making a link between them

On the top of the website, her fans are able to find out information about the upcoming tour dates and are able to buy merchandise.

On the website she is promoting her latest album and advertising it for people who may have not bought it yet.

Taylor also includes images that she posted on Instagram for her fans to see, which again is promoting her social media sites.

Taylor includes on her website highlights from the previous shows so fans can feel included and can relive the tour.

More promotion of the new single and new video ‘Watch it now’

On the website there are links to Taylor’s social media sites, so her fans and anyone who goes on her website can be connected.

Taylor includes a picture of her cat, Meredith, on the website which shows a more fun side to the website. This also reveals what type of character she is.

The label that Taylor is signed to is also included in the website which is another piece of advertisement for the label company.

Her website also includes news about any awards she's received or what has happened at her latest shows.

From Taylor’s website I can tell that her music is targeted at a younger generation that range between 10-20. On her website there is something for everyone and there is something that will appeal to everyone.

This is at the beginning of Taylor’s latest album ‘1989’ album artwork. She is explaining to her fans why she wrote this album and what it is about. This part of the booklet is a chance for the fans to feel connected with Taylor but it is also something for fans to read whilst listening to her album. Each page of the album includes a polaroid with a lyric of each song on it. This is something for her audience to keep and is something personal for them.

This is at the beginning of Taylor’s album artwork. She has stuck to the same colour theme throughout and the colours are plain yet represent her new album as being different and entering a new genre. She also includes polaroid's on each page so the fans feel like they have something exclusive when buying the album.

In this album, Taylor has included the lyrics of each of her songs to go inside the booklet. She sticks to the theme that is used in her website and the font for the title of the songs match the font she uses on her tour and her merchandise.

This is the front and back of Taylor’s album artwork. The front of the album is based on polaroid filter paper which links with each of the pictures that she includes. Both ‘Taylor Swift’ and ‘1989’ are handwritten which adds a relaxed tone to the album tone because there isn’t a lot of detail in the design of the writing as it is Taylor’s handwriting. On the back of the cover, the order of the songs are also handwritten. There is also the same tone of colours throughout the album and the artwork.

Album promotionTaylor had a live stream chat and teamed up with Yahoo in order to do it and it took place August 18th. In this live stream she spoke about her new album ‘1989’ and revealed that her first single from the album would be ‘Shake it off’. The way she promoted this was she was giving hints to her fans on different social media sites like Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr. This created a frenzy revolved around the live stream which created more advertisement for the album and the new single. This made her target audience anticipate the release of the new album meaning they would buy it as soon as it came out. She also appeared in Times Square for a live concert on ‘Good Morning America’ which again promoted her new album as this concert was located in a prime place. Then she appeared on Jimmy Kimmel’s show in Hollywood and put on a live concert for some of her fans singing some of her songs from her latest album. Her poster for her world tour includes her support acts which creates more publicity around the tour.

Music video analysis

The same type of tone that is used in this video is incorporated in the colours of the album artwork. The colours match the theme of the music video and there are a lot of light colours used. But as the music video goes on the colours become darker because the story line starts to open up.

In the music video, there are a variety of long shots and close up of Taylor’s face. The long shots give the music video an epic feel and represent the landscape that this music video is taking place in. The setting of the music is in a desert/national park area surrounded by a variety of wildlife. The vast landscapes that can be seen in some of the shots adds to the epic feel of the music video. Taylor and her co-star Scott Eastwood are the only ones that are shown in the video are being the main characters. This then lets the audience just focus on these two in the music video.

When applying Todorov Theory, the music video is looked at like a story. First of all Taylor’s character is on a movie set with her co-star and she starts to fall in love with him and hopes that when they get back from filming they will be able to have a relationship. But when she gets to the movie premiere she sees that her co-star is married and she is heartbroken. This is the disruption in the story line and then she runs out of the theatre and drives away from her lover which is the resolution. These stills show how the story progresses in the music video.

Goodwin AnalysisLyrics and visuals - ‘Even if its just pretend’ – she is in a movie and is in love with her co-star and is ‘pretending’ to be in love with him as they are acting but reality she wants to be with him.

Music and visuals – As the tempo of the music picks up, more images start to appear faster compared to the beginning of the video.

There are close ups of Taylor Swift throughout the video as she is a solo artist and is the main focus of the video.

There is a direct gaze between Taylor Swift and her co-star Scott Eastwood.

The music video is set in the 1950’s which could contain some intertextual references as Taylor’s latest album is based around that kind of era.

Cross media: Conclusion The whole tone of the music video suits the era Taylor wants her album to feel like as music from the 80’s inspired her album. Throughout the music video muted colours are used and lighter colours are used but as the tempo of the music gets faster the colours start to change. Which could connote the artists’ feelings in the music video. The artist that is shown in the music video is the same as who is portrayed in reality because the clothes that Taylor’s character is wearing is something that she would wear on a day to day basis. From a first glance, the audience can automatically tell that the music video had a high budget as Taylor is signed with a high music label. Taylor’s music label’s aim for this music video was for it to appeal to every single one of her fans and the majority of her audience.