How musicians look.

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Artist: Tokio Hotel
Release: Scream
Label: UMVD
Photographer: ???

This band has a few things going for them that are immediately present in this photograph.
1- They are young.
2- They are attractive.
4- They are androgynous in varying degrees.
3- They could be anime characters.
5- They are European.

Okay, cut the last one, but those four traits are strong selling points in this band’s supposed demographic, and good photography work effectively captures it. Yeah, we can all laugh at the naive exuberance and heady extroversion of these young gents, but their parents are saving their contract advance money. They will be able to retire a few years earlier while you and I have our nice 401k’s to kick back on. They win.

How musicians look.

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Artist: The White Stripes
Release: Icky Thump
Label: Warner Bros./WEA
Photographer: Autumn de Wilde

De Wilde’s work is strong enough, especially with the shoot done for Icky Thump, that these two goofs didn’t need to dress like…goofs…to make a bold photograph using their trademarkey black, white, and red. It just seems like overkill to me. We already know they are a few logs short of a cord; throw this couple in all white and have them hover around those bird figurines like they were one-way tickets to Shangri-La. That’s how you roll with these hipster types.

How musicians look.

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Artist: Our Last Night
Release: The Ghosts Among Us
Label: Epitaph
Photographer: ???

When you’ve got band members that are super young, the trick is, I assume, to make the entire promo photo ordeal not look like something that you’d find in a high school yearbook. That is to say that it has to look halfway-decent, which this does quite easily; there’s no photo in any yearbook, professional or candid, that has a single redeeming artistic quality.