Something that is standing out more and more in the music industry is how important it is to have a unique, memorable brand around yourself as an artist. It’s no longer enough to release music and tour the album cycle. Instead, every artist has an entire brand universe and aesthetic built around each album. It becomes a world that people can participate in. When fans go to the gig, they dress according to the definitive branded era of the album. The album creates a cultural moment that other brands capitalise on. With each new album comes a refresh of the visuals and the artistic world that the music, artist and fans live within.
We only need to look at some of the biggest names in music at the moment to see this in action. The first one that comes to mind is Charli xcx, who had a fairly successful pop career for years, but didn’t quite break through into the huge, festival-headliner household name she is now until her brat album came out. Special Offer Inc created the artwork and surrounding brand world for brat, which is centred around an intentionally low-effort, kind of ugly ‘logo’ which is low res, on a bright lime green background – it screams ‘I don’t care’ but in a cool, minimalist-yet-bold way.
This brand universe influenced her styling and stage setup, taking the same huge green brat curtain with her on her entire tour and watching it get more and more torn, dirty and damaged with every show. Charli didn’t just own this specific shade of green, she effectively branded an entire season as ‘brat summer’. The beauty of brat was that it was so easily recreated: anything green became brat, huge brands created campaigns that nodded to brat and celebrities and public figures got in on the trend. brat and the surrounding world catapulted Charli xcx into the spotlight, and she has gone on to headline Glastonbury, Parklife and Reading & Leeds festivals, showing just how important and impactful a brave, standout album brand is for music artists.
In the summer of 2024, pop artist Zara Larsson was subject to a rather prolific hopecore dolphin meme, where people would post dark emotional confessions over the top of a vibrant, rainbow-filled dolphin image with her song ‘Symphony’ playing over the top. Instead of letting this bruise her ego, she leaned into it and reinvented her self-brand as very club-pop Eurocentric Y2K summer, embracing neon colours and tropical sunsets on the beach.
Everything from her hair and makeup, her album covers, her own outfits and her dancer’s outfits reflect the tropical summer aesthetic, which ties in perfectly with the fun, summer dance music of her latest album ‘Midnight Sun’. Once again, concert-goers dress according to the Midnight Sun visual identity and create makeup looks inspired by the album. Larsson has since seen a noticeable resurgence in cultural relevance during the Midnight Sun era with a much stronger engagement with younger Gen Z audiences.
I could speak in-depth about so many other examples like Sabrina Carpenter and her flirty, retro-glam Short n’ Sweet repositioning or Chappell Roan’s brand image finally clicking with her theatrical, queer, maximalist Midwest Princess aesthetic, both of which inspire concert outfits, makeup looks and high immersion into each of their artist worlds. But it’s not just the pop girlies benefitting from strong, unique and memorable creative direction.
Fontaines D.C. had a fair bit of success as an indie rock band for years, but after their 2024 release of ‘Romance’, they quite literally exploded in popularity, and the success wasn’t driven by the music alone. Before Romance, they looked like every other band on the scene – a gritty, poetic bunch of lads from Dublin in jeans, corduroy and button-up shirts. But with Romance came an intense creative identity shift reflective of the sound of the album, bringing with it a neon, cyberpunk-adjacent brand that would launch them into the mainstream.
The album art features a pink surrealist bleeding chromatic heart on a bright blue sky with their iconic gothic font along the top in neon green. Their outfits leaned into bright, bold lifestyle sportswear mixed with gothic styling – lots of oversized silhouettes and distressed fabric. And so, the concert-goers once again began creating their own versions of these outfits inspired by the neon, dystopian dream-state visuals that Fontaines were embodying. They finally had a brand and a creative universe surrounding it that set them miles apart from other bands, not only in their genre, but everywhere. The brand is instantly recognisable and easily imitated in fashion, making it really accessible for music fans. The Romance brand era placed them firmly into arenas and headline festival slots – topping the bill at Primavera Sound, Electric Picnic and Reading & Leeds festivals.
These are just a few examples that illustrate how important a strong, unique and memorable brand world is for an album cycle and for the artist overall. Artists now create a fully realised world that audiences want to step into. The most successful artist branding of today doesn’t just create recognition, it invites participation.
For emerging and established artists alike, considered creative direction can be the difference between just releasing music and creating a living, breathing shareable world that resonates with people globally.
If you’d like to discuss how thoughtful branding could impact your own project, give us a call or shoot us an email – we would love to help shape a creative world that audiences genuinely connect with.
