Reed 1

Sebastian Reed

Dr. Sharity Nelson

ENGL 1301-210

5/1/2023

Songs of positive energy

Music can often inspire a multitude of feelings in listeners in much of this music. It’s

accompanied by an album cover that often conveys the emotions that the listener should be

feeling before they listen to a single song. These feelings can be conveyed through words, colors,

shapes, and photos. Often times, album covers can have a meaning of what the artist is trying to

say as a message to listeners, also by categories of the songs. The album cover image that will be

described comes from Living Positive, by Pierre Perez-Vergara (Fig. 1). It was released in 2005.

The visual choices help the album image convey the meaning of climbing mountains of life

challenges, and overcoming them on the very top.

The first thing that is noticed in the album cover image is a woman that looks like a

jogger on the right side, because of the clothing. What the jogger is seen doing is she is raising

both of her arms up high, which means that she is very happy about something. Although, her

face cannot be shown to further prove that she is happy, but her pose with her arms up can at

least prove that she is in a good mood about something. The possible reason that the woman’s

face is hidden, is so that viewers of the album cover can better self-insert themselves into her

position of achievement, and overcoming life challenges. Also, with the woman’s arms up high

and standing on the top of the hill, this could mean that the woman tried to overcome a life

challenge by jogging or climbing to the top of the hill by not giving up. What is also noticed

besides the jogger is the high green hills on the background with faded clouds. The location of
 Reed 2

the photo taken is unknown, but it is definitely somewhere that has high green hills, or

mountains. The blue and white color contrast to the mixed clouds in the sky, but it looks blurry.

Another thing, the green mountains in the background are slightly blurred out aswell. There’s no

exact reason why the artist blurred the mountains, but what’s possible is that the author doesn’t

want anyone to recognize the location the photo in the album cover was taken. Some say that

people might re-create the photo in a better quality, or some say that some people can steal the

ideas from the artist. The colors in the background of the album cover, are distorted to mainly

focus on the woman. This is because the artist wanted to focus on the achievement, and how it

doesn’t matter where, when, or how someone can achieve a life goal. It is to help others succeed

if anyone is having problems coping with life.

The song album consists with visual text that says: “Living Positive” on the top left. The

name of the artist on the top right with a white box surrounding the text with the blue sky colors

in the background, and the name of the music brand called “Kosinus” on the bottom right. The

visual text on the image that says “Living Positive”, is more of an encouragement for the listener

to find ways to cope with life issues and life challenges. The possible reason why the text color is

different on top, is so that the text can be easily seen instead of being invisible from the with the

color of the sky or the clouds. Or maybe the author wanted to make a different text layout design

for the text. This album or the music in it is great for people to listen if they are struggling with

life, not give up their hopes, goals, and achievements. Someone who has not listened to any of

the music, could assume with the album cover can relate to the song, but not based on the song.

The music with this kind of beats and tunes are very good for listeners who only want to

hear music that help motivate and keep them happy and moving all day long. Also, this album is

related to anti-depression, because not only organizations are involved in helping people make a
 Reed 3

change in their lives by physical activity, music can also help besides the organizations who are

helping people that are struggling with whatever comes their way, also in speaking of mental

health issues. These kinds of situations when it comes to life problems, happens to mostly

everyone on a daily basis. People will always run into life problems that will eventually come

their way at any time.

To conclude, the visual choices help the album image convey the meaning of climbing

mountains of life challenges, and overcoming them on the very top. The artists send messages

through different tones of music to share their experiences in life by the theme of the song. The

music from Pierre Perez-Veraga, for example, are the types of songs that help people be resilient

in harsh times. And the album cover image (Fig. 1) is a perfect example to help the listener

understand what type of music is in the collection, and to understand the meaning of what the

album cover has based on its contents.

 Reed 4

Appendix

Fig. 1: Pierre Perez-Vergara Album cover image.

 Reed 5

Works Cited

Pierre Perez-Vergara. Song album cover Living Positive, Kosinus, 2005.