When asked about the meaning behind the Fleetwood Mac cover art for Mystery to Me, former guitarist Bob Welch declared that “despite how much we stuff ourselves with knowledge, we’re still monkeys”. To be honest, if you go on a hunt for some of the weirdest album artwork of all time, it won’t be long before you’re down a rabbit hole of bizarre stories of popular culture.
While it would take a long time to list all of the strangest contributions to album artwork, it’s no secret that this artistic facet holds a unique avenue for self-expression that extends beyond the boundaries of the album’s sonic landscapes. A band might assert their psychedelic inclinations, but there’s something that particularly resonates within vivid hues and retro-futuristic visuals, alongside imagery that often denotes multifaceted dimensions, communicating more about the essence of a record than word of mouth ever could.
Broadly speaking, album artwork is a fundamentally excellent way of using creative license to convey a musician’s brand, sound, feel, image, and so on. Take the cover of The Velvet Underground and Nico, for example. You could probably show this to any music fan, and they’re likely to have seen it before, even if they’re not familiar with the band at all. In the good old days, artwork could be found in pride of place, gracing the back of a vinyl sleeve, enveloping a cassette tape, or adorning CD covers to flaunt the feel of the music nestled within. One of the most striking cases of this is David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs – when the CD is opened up, it reveals Bowie lying sideways with his bottom half forming the shape of a dog’s hind legs.
Bowie unanimously became an artistic connoisseur when it came to album cover art, so much so that his public images, like Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane, became distinguished a significant amount by the photography that accompanied the respective eras. Aladdin Sane, in particular, has become one of his most revered works of art, acting in tandem with his image at the time.
But then came the days of streaming. With the exception of fervent collectors who cherish the novelty of buying physical music copies, the majority now indulge in their beloved tunes through platforms like Spotify. In the pre-digital epoch, cover art stood as the inaugural encounter, acting as the gateway to a single or album. However, today’s landscape enables almost limitless auditory exploration, liberating listeners – for better or for worse – from the confines of predetermined visual associations.
That doesn’t mean that album artwork has lost its spark, though, far from it. In fact, its significance has surged to new heights as artists must increasingly leverage visual elements to establish their identity and cut through the noise. Platforms such as Spotify have, in a sense, both equalised the field while somewhat muting creativity: in the past, albums thrived within the cocoon of their own artwork, blessed with graphics and fonts specifically chosen to epitomise their sound. Now, however, streaming sites have standardised works, confining them to a narrow spectrum of categories, all sporting the same font and presentation as the next title.
So, even though album artwork may seem a smaller task – literally, given the fact that sites present them within tiny squares – it’s actually still as important as it ever was, if not more so. In the midst of platforms where uniformity reigns, artwork stands as one of the few opportunities to truly distinguish yourself. In an environment that often leads to snap judgments, artwork frequently becomes the initial arbiter of our impression of a musical piece. For example, if a cover bears the hallmarks of amateurish 1990s aesthetics, coupled with a questionably composed photo of the artist, you’re probably going to assume the music is lacking in quality, too.
In reality, artwork is the bridge between that first engagement and diving deeper into the musician’s artistic realm. Artwork is a veil that should be treated as the gateway that it is – it’s a powerful way of extending creativity into something that holds profound visceral power. Then, if a fan really likes a piece of music, buying a physical copy of an album is akin to crafting a world around those interests.
Album art has evolved beyond being a mere image gracing a record’s front. It now stands as an integral facet of online brands. Within the realm of streaming, a visual dimension profoundly impacts a musician’s trajectory toward success: this is a void that needs to be elegantly filled with accompanying album art.
Across decades, the primary role of cover artwork was to vie for notice amid the array of albums adorning the shelves of record stores. Today, that traditional rack has been supplanted by the bustling landscape of social media timelines. In today’s landscape and beyond, artistic design must not only contend with fellow album covers but also compete with the gaze of a scrolling audience amid a medley of memes, personal snapshots, cat antics, and a multitude of competing images.
As Welch said, we’re all just monkeys drawn to striking pictures and sounds, so why not take advantage of that?
