That ‘brat’ has taken over the cultural debate on the internet (and the electoral debate in the United States) means two things: 1) that those of us who always believed in Charli XCX were right; 2) that the use of a simple colour in a promotional campaign can produce real miracles. We don’t have to go any further than last summer to remember how ‘Barbie’ turned the world completely pink.
The power of a colour is known above all by artists, and there are many examples of pop music albums that, throughout history, have become absolutely inseparable from a single colour: to the lime green cover of ‘brat’ we must add precedents such as the pink ‘Teenage Dream’ by Katy Perry, the white of the ‘White Album’ by the Beatles, the blue of Weezer’s debut or the red of ‘Red’ by Taylor Swift.
Blue in particular has been and continues to be a highly sought-after and beloved colour by artists of all disciplines. Few colours represent so well the different moods of human beings, from joy to depression, passing through that state of calm and serenity that we all long for. In colour psychology, “blue is the opposite of red”, as Julieta Wibel explains in one of her informative videos (about Ter and his blue-dyed hair, by the way). Red is warm and alarming; blue is cold and calm. But the thing is not, ahem, black or white.
Billie Eilish’s ‘Hit Me Hard and Soft’ is the latest masterpiece based on this colour; the closing track is titled ‘Blue’. At the beginning of the song, a lively drum beat accompanies Eilish as she sings that she “tries to live in black and white, but I’m so blue” (a literal translation of “I’m sad”). But then ‘Blue’ descends to the depths of the sea; the tone turns “dark blue-almost black”, abysmal. Billie addresses someone who has hurt her: “You were born bluer than a butterfly / so beautiful, and deprived of oxygen.”
Historically, the colour blue has been associated – as we have just seen – with sadness and melancholy. This is where the “blues” comes from, invented by African-American slaves and later popularised by singers such as Bessie Smith. In pop, artists have been able to show themselves as ‘Blue’, like Joni Mitchell, or ‘Kind of Blue’, like Miles Davis. ‘Blue Moon’ is one of the great sad tunes in the American songbook and, of course, ‘Blue Monday’ by New Order has marked more Mondays than we can count. In ambient, the deep blue tone is impossible to escape in the projects of new artists such as Øneheart, leadwave or My Heart is Empty; the music sounds just as desolate and cold as the covers. And then there is ‘Blue’ by Beyoncé, which, dedicated to her daughter, may be the most beautiful song of her career, a song that, although it is not sad, does sound melancholic.
It is not just pop music that has been and continues to be dyed blue. On the big screen, this colour has inspired great works such as Krzysztof Kieślowski’s trilogy of colours, in the case of ‘Bleu’, symbolising a break with the past. But the most radical use of blue in cinema may be that of Derek Jarman in ‘Blue’ (1993), a film inspired by Jarman’s experience with AIDS. Released four months before his death, it is a film without scenes; a static blue screen is the only image we see in it because, at the time of its creation, Jarman was practically blind and could only see blue tones. Meanwhile, Jarman’s voice tells us about his illness, but the filmmaker also imagines, daydreams, wonders what lies beyond the sky.
In Jarman’s film, blue is everywhere, but not just sad; there is an element of innocence in Jarman’s text as well, and in fact the shade of blue used – Klein or electric blue – indicates a vibrant and lively feeling. The shade of blue therefore determines the feeling expressed in a given work. Mitchell’s anguished face in ‘Blue’, considered the saddest of all break-up albums ever created, is not the same as Madonna’s sunlit face in ‘True Blue’, by the way, an expression linked to loyalty especially in the context of a love relationship (it means something like “I will be faithful to you”) from which it is impossible not to extract also a component of innocence and illusion; the blue before the abyss. Isn’t that what La Oreja de Van Gogh’s ‘Blue Dress’ is about?
It is the same feeling of freedom and infinite expansion, of power over life, that Cristian Castro expressed in 2002 in his great anthem, ‘Azul’, probably the most iconic song of this name, with all due respect to ‘Estoy azulado’ by Soda Stereo. When Castro sings “this love is blue like the sea, blue; as from your gaze my illusion was born”, he makes it clear that blue here no longer means depression, but, on the contrary, indicates an overwhelming and indescribable happiness.
The blue of the sea and the sky has inspired countless works throughout history that go back centuries and millennia; the sky and the sea are synonymous with freedom and possibility and art has not ceased to exploit them symbolically throughout history. ‘Summer Blue’ marked a generation, the Italian pop of the 50s and 60s is inseparable from the clear blue of the Mediterranean sky and sea and, in cinema, this color has also been assigned a political meaning: the clear, cloudless skies of ‘Edward Scissorhands’ (1990) or ‘American Beauty’ (1999) symbolize the ideal of the United States while its inhabitants in both films live experiences that are anything but enviable.
The concept of “possibility” or potential in culture is also linked to technology and modernity, and blue has symbolised the future, for example in films such as Avatar or, decades earlier, The Imaginary Planet or Gandahar, in which the characters’ skin was blue (the Smurfs were something else). In Jacques Tati’s films, blue skies also decorate films such as My Uncle or Playtimes, which parody the ultra-modernity exported from the United States to Europe as early as the 1960s.
In music, the cover of FKA twigs’ LP1 screamed “future” from every angle, and the electric blue tone of the carpet on the cover and the music videos for Nathy Peluso’s Grasa – and her use of the iPhone – tell us that the singer, as much as she looks to the past, is still installed in the 21st century. Blue therefore continues to mark the aesthetics of current modernity; only André 3000 has gone so far as to imagine a ‘New Blue Sun’, looking beyond the stars. Others, like Billie Eilish or more recently The Marías, have preferred to continue diving into the depths of the ocean.
