Research & analysis - cover page layouts layouts

In order to plan out the layout of my music magazine, i thought i should do some research on existing pop magazine layouts. From my research i have found out that many of them have the main image overlapping the masthead. They have they have writing such as the kicker and the selling line around the image on either side. Also, the background of the image is either a blank colour or a colour fading out or into another colour.