Pop Magazines - Articles

As part of my research I have looked at articles which appear in pop music magazines which are aimed at a similar audience to mine. I have found that the main story is almost always an interview with a famous pop star and this is done in a chatty informal tone which does not appear too difficult to read, as the target audience is quite young and may have varying reading abilities. The topics are generally around the singers music, such as their new album/song, who they have been working with, whether they are happy with the music they're creating etc. There is also an element of gossip in these interviews however to make them interesting to teenager girls, and this is generally around their love life and how their life is now they are famous. An interview is chosen rather than a review or an article because the target market is interested in the celebrity themselves and not just their music, and also due to the young age they do not want to necessarily read a lot of text.

I noticed some articles, particularly Top of the Pops, have a short informal introduction to the interview which sets context around the conversation the reader is about to see. It sets the scene that the interview is taking place in and how the singer is interacting with the environment and their general mood that day. It also sets context regarding what is happening in the artists life, such as popular news stories which people may be talking about (for example Harry Styles interviews around the time he was dating Caroline Flack would often highlight the age difference before it started and the controversy surrounding that).

I have decided to stick to convention when writing my article and do a very easy to read chatty interview and feature very generic, safe questions. This is obviously done because the target audience enjoy reading that type of interview and I want the questions to be appropriate to the age which will be reading it, but also feature the hint of gossip that other magazines in this genre do. This informal tone will be created using similar words which are used in the magazines I have looked at. Often slang is used such as 'OMG' or 'Swifties' when referring to Taylor Swift fans as this is how the target audience is imagined to speak. This is something I will try and incorporate into my interview.