Album Art Today Sucks!

Alex

King Of The Wasteland
I was walking around HMV lookin at some CDs and I realised a lot of the new releases simply had a photo of the artist on the front with the name of the artist and sometimes the name of the album.

Now I know photos of artists have been used for album covers for years (The Beatles were doing it all the time) but there seems to be a distinct lack of creativity today. My sister recently got some new CDs, (JLS:banghead: Paloma Faith and a couple more) now out of all the album covers Paloma Faith had the most interesting one

PalomaFaithAlbumCover.jpg


It is really interesting with the background image and the doves like a painting and actually looks like there was some creative input to it.

Most albums though tend to have no creative input at all and because of this they all look similar which means they don't stand out when you're browsing for a new CD and unless you are specifically looking for that particular artist chances are you will bypass it.

lady_gaga_the_fame.jpg


jls-cd-cover.jpg



Can you honestly tell me these covers jump out at you and are interesting to you???

What happened to interesting covers that used illustrations and photo manipulation.

Albums like Nirvana's Nevermind, Red Hot Chili Peppers Mother's Milk and Blood Sugar Sex Magik, Alice In Chains' Dirt and Guns n Roses Appetite For Destruction, these all used interesting images and/or photo manipulation that was great, what happened???
 
This is mainly because album covers these days don't need to be spectacular. Most people don't actually buy hard copies of albums these days, prefering to just download the music, If they're really motivated, they might look at the small square of artwork in the corner of Itunes.

It isn't like yesteryear, where everytime you got out the album to put it in your CD player, you would see the album art. Now music is just two clicks away, so the album art doesn't have to be as impressive as oh, I don't know, the music. I don't really see it as a big deal. If you're buying an album solely on what the cover looks like, then we might have a deeper problem there.
 
No, I buy the CD because of the music (which is generally older stuff) But I like to see an interesting cover when I take it out to play (It makes me feel effort has been put into the record). I guess I forgot about downloads because I only download occasionally, I guess you're right in saying because of downloading, covers don't have to be as interesting as they used to be
 
Sure there are plenty of shitty album covers, but I find this to be more true with mainstream music. I buy a good amount of music, none of it would be considered mainstream, and I see plenty of cool, well thought out album covers. I'll give you a few from 2009.




Bluetech - The Divine Invasion


img_1_pr.jpg


Eliot Lipp - Peace Love Weed 3D​


peaceloveweed3d.jpg


Entheogenic - Flight of the Urubus​


00-entheogenic-flight_of_the_urubus.jpg


Here are a few albums that I bought in 09, and really enjoyed the album art on all three covers. I'm glad most of the artists I listen to put as much effort in the album cover as they do in the music.
 
I don't think there is anything wrong with covers for albums now adays. You have pointed out some horrendous covers in your views, but there are just as many great ones, just as there were just as many poor covers in the past. As art styles change, producers change album covers along with them, so maybe it is not the covers themselves, something that I know is still important for advertising musicians, but rather your taste in art.
 
Maybe its that with things seeming to be more fickle, artists want their faces/images known so if the albums liked/popular they can be recognised.
Nowadays after 1 bad album, reports circulate that they are in danger of being dropped etc so it might be like 'someone's gotta like this, least theyd know its me' rather the person with the nice picture?
 
if you look around youll find alot of incredible album art. I mean as you go through music the less imaginitive albums will have less imaginite artwork while incredible and creative music will have incredible and creative artwork.

This on is from Portugal the Man who are one of the most incredible bands going right now

portugal-theman-satanicsatanist-300x300.jpg


that cover actually folds out to look like this

04-488x366.jpg


John Gourley the singer for portugal the man actually does all the artwork

a couple others im digging are this one which is The Empyrean by John Frusciante

frusciante_the_empyrean_cover.jpg


as well as Solar Gambling the latest release from Omar Rodriguez Lopez

1259769920_omar-rodriguez-lopez-solar-gambling-2009.jpg
 

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