Analysis of a Double Page Spread Music Magazine; Interview!

The magazine I have chosen to look at is ‘Top of the Pops’ which includes an interview with Misha B. The genre of magazine is quite clear as it says it in the masthead but it is a pop magazine. Top of the pops is said to be the favourite children and teen magazine. Around 18% of its readership is boys whilst the majority is girls at 82%. They clearly target girls through by the choice of topics and people they include as well as their chosen colour scheme. The age range tends to be girls between 11-15. Misha B (the person being interviewed) originally found fame on the TV show ‘The X Factor’ which is typically known to search for the next ‘POP star’. As this is where she found fame many people know her and could possibly take interest in her. She tends to base herself around the pop scene which would fit in well with the magazine.

The masthead (title) of the article is actually a quote from the interview. This instantly attracts attention from the reader and tries to persuade them to read the article. As it’s only a few words from the interview people won’t understand entirely what it’s about so would need to read the whole thing in order to find out. They highlight one of the words, ‘heart’ and also put it in capitals because it implies that a lot of the interview will revolve around that subject but also because it fits in with the typical teenage subject of love. For the sub-heading they use current slang words such ‘emosh’ as this suits their main audience of teenage girls. They don’t use a drop capital as it’s in the style of an interview. This could be because they do not include paragraphs of information about the artist as people are expected to know but also because it’s aimed at young people so they wouldn’t want to over power them with too much text. The question that is being asked is in bold and a different colour whilst the answer is in normal font and colour. Each question is in a different paragraph but it is all kept quite close together. Each question asked is most formal but quite personal. They do however use slight conversational words such as ‘so’ and at the end they do add a comment about the interview. There’s a reference to her latest single and they do question her about that which is obviously one of the main reasons why she done the interview, to promote her album. They also ask typical girly questions about her dream date, boy issues and childhood life. They include two pull-quotes other than the main title. One is surrounded by a heart which again links to them highlighting the ‘heart’ in their title. Another is in the middle of all the text which helps to draw your eye to the text and once again should make you want to continue to read.  They use boxes as smaller sub-headings so the reader would know what to expect in the next few questions. They also have a smaller box at the bottom which gives information on the artist’s new single and album and where the readers can listen to it. The colour scheme which they use is typically girl’s colours which include pinks and light blues mostly. This again fits in well with their target audience of girls between the ages of 11-15. 

‘Top of the Pops’ includes one main image of the artist and two other smaller ones. One of the smaller ones is of Misha B on ‘The X-Factor’ as this is where many people will know her from. The main image is based on the right page and she is wearing drawing attention to the necklace. It consumes most of the page but does have text boxes overlapping at the bottom. It looks as though she has been cut out from her original shoot and placed onto the page with a coloured background. They use a long shot in the corner so you can view her whole body.

 To the left is annotated notes about the chosen double page spread. Below is the original copy in colour.