LILY ALLEN - Alright Still

After analysing the first three digipacks of different genres, I believe that a pop genre would suit me better to create my music video so I decided to analyse more pop digipacks to gather more needed information, such as this Lily Allen digipack.

‘Alright Still’ is made up of eventful songs and a ‘colourful’ album cover, the title could therefore represent that she has gotten through life, despite the hard times she’s had to divulge in. Additionally, there is quite a lot going on in the album cover which could again suggest she has been through a lot. The title could therefore be more proof to this as she is stating she is ‘Alright still’ even after what she’s been through so far in life. For example, on the cover there is a police helmet which could suggest she or someone close, has been in trouble with the police, this could possibly link in with ‘Alfie’, one of her songs on the album and her brother. There are also signs of music pasted all over the album which could show this is her main interest and means a lot to her or it could suggest that music had actually saved her from her life before and made it better.

In the top left of the album cover is her name in a lightning shape, and that is shown on her poster as well, which is how we know the poster relates to the album and not just Lily herself. Once again, similarly to the album cover, the poster is posed as you would expect, but the image is simpler itself as Lily is against a white background. However, you could say the image of Lily, could be likened to an actual lily as she is the main part to the image and colourful like the inside of the lily to the left and then the surroundings of it are white like Lily Allen’s poster.

Additionally, on the poster, Lily Allen’s pose looks a bit suspicious, as though she looks innocent but is planning something. This could be due to the gold ‘bling’ associated with ‘chavs’, as typically they are the troublesome sort. This therefore interlinks with the video I have chosen to analyse – ‘Smile’ alongside the poster and album cover due to the choreography and the lyrics. Throughout the song, there are many references to revenge on a person who has obviously caused her some sort of heartbreak. The lyrics, ‘see you messed up my mental health’, shows that she blames that person for everything and in the video it shows her paying her friends to beat him up and trash his house as revenge as the lyrics of ‘but with a little help from my friends’ are heard. However if you didn’t listen to the rest of the lyrics, that one line could sound perfectly innocent, though it soon becomes apparent that it isn’t once the video has been watched, or all the lyrics listened to. This then ‘troublesome’ attitude that’s shown through the song smile could be linked to the images on the album’s front cover as examples of what she has done that have caused problems. Through other parts of the song though, we realise she doesn’t seem to care what people think of her or isn’t ashamed/regretful of her past as her album cover gives us an insight into her life and the lyrics ‘at worst I feel bad for a while, but then I just smile’. In addition to this though, the rest of her songs on this album ‘Alright Still’ only prove more so that she doesn’t care what people think of her and her family.