The Concept Album as Visual-SonicTextual Spectacle: The Transmedial Storyworld of Coldplay’s Mylo Xyloto

• Main Author: Lori Burns
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: International Association for the Study of Popular Music 2016-01-01
• Series: IASPM Journal
• Subjects: concept album; spectacle; multimodality; intermediality; transmediality
• Online Access: https://iaspmjournal.net/index.php/IASPM_Journal/article/view/783/pdf

This paper studies the elaboration of the concept album by means of multimodal promotional strategies that include the concert tour, music videos, books, as well as other digital and print materials. Adopting the perspective that the meaning of a concept album emerges in and through a potentially complex network of materials, we can receive and understand concept album storytelling to operate according to multimedial, intermedial and transmedial contexts. This study examines the transmedial storyworld of Coldplay’s Mylo Xyloto concept spectacle as it is developed in and through the material content of the original album, the Coldplay: Live 2012 (Coldplay 2012c) concert film, as well as the paraphonographic materials that extend Mylo Xyloto into a variety of media