A SEMIOTIC EVALUATION OF COVER IMAGES OF THE TEN MOST HELD TURKISH POP MUSIC ON THE 2021 SPOTIFY LIST

Abstract

Semiotics, or semiotics as it is commonly known, is an interdisciplinary research field that examines the sign strings of studies in many fields such as music, sociology and linguistics. Today, semiotics, which makes metaphorical analysis of various disciplinary fields such as literature, art, music and cinema and has a wide range as a field of study, has been an important communication tool in this sense. The science of semiotics, which has both a principled and free movement environment due to its multidisciplinary structure, has explained objects, figures and situations in this way by revealing the meaning and establishing a connection with the place of that meaning in society. Among these fields, especially in music, graphic designs used in the creation of album covers, concert posters, posters have an important role in conveying the message that the musical product wants to convey. In this research, it is aimed to make a semiotic analysis of the cover images of the ten most listened songs in the field of Turkish pop music in the Spotify 2021 list. Within the scope of the purpose of the study, cover images were evaluated semiotically in terms of elements such as writing styles, color preferences, use of figures and objects. In this case, questions such as how the current album cover designs examined are, what kind of differences they have with the album covers of the past, how the effects, colors, figures, etc. used in the design of the album covers are, whether the album covers are meaningfully compatible with the title of the album. According to this analysis, ten cover images determined by scanning reliable sites on the internet were reached. The covers were analyzed semiotically in four groups with the criteria of object, human, digital photograph and color under the elements of signified and signifier according to the sign method created by F. Saussure. In addition to these examinations, the content of the lyrics in the albums was also evaluated and it was determined whether they were meaningfully compatible with the album title and cover image. In the light of the evaluations made, it has been concluded that some of the album covers are compatible with the name of the album and some are not. It has been observed that the design of the album covers is influenced by the general fashion sense of the global music industry, and for this reason, they are far from the old album covers in terms of design and meaning.