DCJ wrote:
In my view, American college-aged women of the 1980s responded to the .................. less provocative album art of F&B and Avalon.
Crikey, although it has literally been staring me in the face for decades I had never considered that, along with the musical output, the artwork also changed quite dramatically to make the product more appealing to a different market but now that DCJ has pointed it out it is so obvious.....doh!!! There is no doubt that the artwork on the first 5 albums helped hook me in so it makes absolute sense to change the style of the album artwork when targeting a very different market.
Just off the top of my head, but didn’t the guys style themselves quite differently and much more softly over this period as well? I guess that all fits in with the objective of hitting the female market generally and the US market specifically.
It certainly worked - and it should be no surprise that the pre-existing fan base (which was predominantly male and British) was generally left feeling cold by the last 2.5 studio albums as obviously we were not on the radar by then.