Kolorcoaster: Painting Feelings One Hue at a Time
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54536/ajiri.v5i2.7772Keywords:
Color Symbolism, Emotional Mediation, Emotional Representation, Narrative Theory, Song Lyric AnalysisAbstract
This study analyzes the color symbolism in Maki’s album Kolorcoaster to examine how colors function as emotional symbols and how these symbols construct a coherent narrative of love and emotional development. Guided by Emotional Mediation Theory and Narrative Theory, the study explores how colors such as red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, black, brown, and the full spectrum of ROYGBIV represent emotional experiences including attraction, stability, uncertainty, regret, grief, healing, and acceptance. Using qualitative content analysis based on Creswell (2018), the researchers treated the official song lyrics as literary texts and analyzed them through open coding to identify recurring symbolic patterns and emotional themes. The findings reveal that colors in the album do not simply describe emotions but function as symbolic mediators of emotional meaning within the lyrics. Bright colors such as yellow and blue symbolize emotional security and stability, shifting colors like red, green, and indigo represent tension and uncertainty, while darker or fading colors such as black and orange reflect grief, memory, and emotional integration. The study further shows that these symbolic colors create a cyclical emotional narrative that moves from equilibrium to disruption, loss, and new equilibrium, presenting love as a continuous and evolving process rather than a linear journey.
Downloads
References
Arjmand, H., Hohagen, J., Paton, B., & Rickard, N. S. (2017). Emotional responses to music: Shifts in frontal brain asymmetry mark periods of musical change. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, Article 2044. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02044
Aydogan, D., Kara, E., & Kalkan, E. (2021). Understanding relational resilience of married adults in quarantine days. Current Psychology, 41(11), 8249–8259. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-02224-2
Aykutoğlu, B., & Uysal, A. (2017). The relationship between intimacy change and passion: A dyadic diary study. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, Article 2257. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02257
Batthyany, K., & Hernández, C. (2025). Rejection sensitivity and attachment avoidance as predictors of intimacy struggles in romantic relationships. Psychology of Woman Journal, 6(2). https://doi.org/10.61838/kman.pwj.6.2.17
Bode, A., & Kushnick, G. (2021). Proximate and ultimate perspectives on romantic love. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, Article 573123. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.573123
Cañón, J. S. G., Herrera, P., Gómez, E., & Cano, E. (2019). The emotions that we perceive in music: The influence of language and lyrics comprehension on agreement. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1909.05882
Clarke, T., & Costall, A. (2008). The emotional connotations of color: A qualitative investigation. Color Research & Application, 33(5), 406–410. https://doi.org/10.1002/col.20435
Collins, N. L., Feeney, B. C., Cimato, A., DeSantis, D., Gilliam, B., Mendelson, C., & Rosenblum, S. (2000). A safe haven: An attachment theory perspective on support seeking and caregiving in intimate relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(6), 1053–1073. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.78.6.1053
Creswell, J. W., & Poth, C. N. (2018). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches (4th ed.). SAGE Publications.
Dael, N., Perseguers, M.-N., Marchand, C., Antonietti, J.-P., & Mohr, C. (2016). Put on that colour, it fits your emotion: Colour appropriateness as a function of expressed emotion. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 69(8), 1619–1630. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2015.1090462
Eerola, T., Kirts, C., & Saarikallio, S. (2025). Episode model: The functional approach to emotional experiences of music. Psychology of Music, 53(4), 590–615. https://doi.org/10.1177/03057356241279763
Eerola, T., & Saari, P. (2025). Music and emotion: A review of the field. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-024-02634-4
Evans, N. D., Juhl, J., Hepper, E. G., Wildschut, T., Sedikides, C., & Fetterman, A. K. (2022). Romantic nostalgia as a resource for healthy relationships. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 39(7), 2181–2206. https://doi.org/10.1177/02654075221075773
Farhadi, A. (2026). Emotion as love in disguise: A dynamic love-based valuation theory of emotional intelligence. Preprints.org. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202603.1145.v1
Fernández, A. M., Barbato, M. T., Barone, P., Zavalla, B., Rivera-Ottenberger, D., & Guzmán-González, M. (2025). What is the link of closeness and jealousy in romantic relationships? Behavioral Sciences, 15(2), Article 132. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs15020132
Fisher, H. E., Xu, X., Aron, A., & Brown, L. L. (2016). Intense, passionate, romantic love: A natural addiction? How the fields that investigate romance and substance abuse can inform each other. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, Article 687. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00687
Fuentes-Sánchez, N., Elipe-Miravet, M., Pastor, R., Escrig, M. A., & Pastor, M. C. (2021). Emotion elicitation during music listening: Subjective self-reports, facial expression, and autonomic reactivity. Psychophysiology, 58(10), Article e13884. https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.13884
Gala, J., & Kapadia, S. (2013). Romantic relationships in emerging adulthood: A developmental perspective. Psychological Studies, 58(4), 406–418. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12646-013-0219-5
Graziano, F., Mastrokoukou, S., Cattelino, E., Rollè, L., & Calandri, E. (2024). Conflict and intimacy in emerging adults’ romantic relationships and depressive symptoms: The mediating role of identity and couple satisfaction. Behavioral Sciences, 14(11), Article 977. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs14110977
Hanada, M. (2017). Correspondence analysis of color-emotion associations. Color Research & Application, 42(6), 772–781. https://doi.org/10.1002/col.22171
Henderson, J. L. (2023). Jungian archetypes in contemporary songwriting: Beyond the literary text. Arts, 11(1), Article 14. https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11010014
Hu, J., He, Y., Liang, T., Wang, C., & Li, C. (2025). Music2Palette: Emotion-aligned color palette generation via cross-modal representation learning. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2507.04758
Jonauskaite, D., & Mohr, C. (2025). Do we feel colours? A systematic review of 128 years of psychological research linking colours and emotions. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 32(4), 1457–1486. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-024-02615-z
Lavrenova, O. (2023). Color semantics of the cultural landscape. Arts, 12(3), Article 111. https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12030111
Lin, K., & Zhang, D. (2024). The emotional bridge: Exploring the association between color and Western and Chinese music. In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Visual Information Communications and Interaction (VINCI 2024). https://doi.org/10.1145/3678698.3687189
Lindborg, P., & Friberg, A. K. (2015). Colour association with music is mediated by emotion: Evidence from an experiment using a colour-picking task. PLOS ONE, 10(12), e0144013. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0144013
Martino, G., & Marks, L. E. (2022). Cross-modal correspondences between music and color. i-Perception, 13(2), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1177/20416695221083264
Mattingly, B. A., McIntyre, K. P., & Lewandowski, G. W., Jr. (2020). Interpersonal relationships and the self-concept. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43747-3
Ogolsky, B. G., Dobson, K., Rivas-Koehl, M., Kawas, G., & Hardesty, J. L. (2025). The progression of college student romantic relationship development: Stability and change over 10 years. Personal Relationships, 32(1). https://doi.org/10.1111/pere.12590
Overbeek, G., Ha, T., Scholte, R., De Kemp, R., & Engels, R. C. (2007). Brief report: Intimacy, passion, and commitment in romantic relationships—Validation of a triangular love scale for adolescents. Journal of Adolescence, 30(3), 523–528. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2006.12.002
Ritchie, L., & Madill, A. (2022). Metaphor in song lyrics: A cognitive linguistic approach to emotional expression. Psychology of Musicヌ, 50(2), 321–338. https://doi.org/10.1177/03057356211067607
Rohmiyati, Y., Septianingsih, C., & Fauzah, S. (2023). Figurative language: A key to understanding in Taylor Swift’s “Enchanted” lyrics. J-Shelves of Indragiri (JSI), 5(1), 1–15.
Shuker, R. (2021). Understanding popular music culture (5th ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315694870
Simoës-Perlant, A., Benintendi-Medjaoued, S., & Gramaje, C. (2026). Emotional congruence in childhood: The influence of music and color on cognitive processing. Psychology International, 8(1), Article 6. https://doi.org/10.3390/psycholint8010006
Slotter, E. B., Gardner, W. L., & Finkel, E. J. (2009). Who am I without you? The influence of romantic breakup on the self-concept. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36(2), 147–160. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167209352250
Solomon, D. H., Knobloch, L. K., Theiss, J. A., & McLaren, R. M. (2016). Relational turbulence theory: Explaining variation in subjective experiences and communication within romantic relationships. Human Communication Research, 42(4), 507–532. https://doi.org/10.1111/hcre.12091
Sternberg, R. J. (1986). A triangular theory of love. Psychological Review, 93(2), 119–135. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.93.2.119
Strle, G., Pesek, M., & Marolt, M. (2026). Affective experience of music: Emotional and color perception of folk and other musical genres. OJS Admin, 4.
Subhan, S. (2023). Symbol analysis in selected song lyrics. Eralingua: Jurnal Pendidikan Bahasa Asing dan Sastra, 8(1), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.37110/jell.v8i01.170
Sultio, A., & Gomez, D. (2022). Literary poetic tradition: An archetypal analysis of selected Kagan poems. International Journal of Research Studies in Education, 11(3). https://doi.org/10.5861/ijrse.2022.158
Tartakovsky, E. (2025). Who is afraid of romantic relationships? Relationship fears and their connection with personal values and socio-demographic variables. Behavioral Sciences, 15(2), Article 191. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs15020191
Todorov, T. (1971). The poetics of prose. Cornell University Press. https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501741692
Toppo, P., & Ahamed, S. (2024). Chromatic narratives: The semiotic and psychological use of colour in art and graphic novels. ShodhKosh: Journal of Visual and Performing Arts, 5(1), 1285–1301. https://doi.org/10.29121/shodhkosh.v5.i1.2024.3114
Towler, L. B., Graham, C. A., Bishop, F. L., & Hinchliff, S. (2022). Sex and relationships in later life: Older adults’ experiences and perceptions of sexual changes. The Journal of Sex Research, 60(9), 1318–1331. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2022.2093322
Trost, W., Trevor, C., Fernandez, N., Steiner, F., & Frühholz, S. (2024). Live music stimulates the affective brain and emotionally entrains listeners in real time. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121(10), Article e2316306121. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2316306121
Vuoskoski, J. K., & Eerola, T. (2022). Music, empathy, and intimate connection. Empirical Musicology Review, 16(1–2), 14–28. https://doi.org/10.18061/emr.v16i1-2.7856
Way, L. C., & McKerrell, S. (2017). Music as multimodal discourse: Semiotics, power and protest. Bloomsbury Academic. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781501327100
Werner-Seidler, A., Hitchcock, C., Hammond, E., Hill, E., Golden, A., Breakwell, L., Ramana, R., Moore, R., & Dalgleish, T. (2020). Emotional complexity across the life story: Elevated negative emodiversity and diminished positive emodiversity in sufferers of recurrent depression. Journal of Affective Disorders, 273, 106–112. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2020.04.060
Whiteford, K. L., Schloss, K. B., Helwig, N. E., & Palmer, S. E. (2018). Color, music, and emotion: Bach to the blues. i-Perception, 9(6), 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1177/2041669518808535
Zvonova, E., & Tarabakina, L. (2015). Emotional mediation of the comprehension of a piece of music. Journal of Russian & East European Psychology, 52(1), 44–58.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Darryl Imperial, Grenifer Silverio, Jean Myka Ortega, Joahnna Marie Delos Santos, Crisha Mar Labra, Shielo Nicole Abergas, Mecca Ella Pino, Fatima Bangkulit, Jessa Emuy
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
