Abstract
This chapter concerns album cover design. After an initial discussion of the album covers produced for bands such as The Beatles, Cream, Led Zeppelin, The Cure, Sex Pistols, The Rolling Stones, Kanye West, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and others, I conduct case studies of contemporary British band Bear’s Den’s approach to album cover design and Australian singer–songwriter Dustin Tebbutt’s work with Jefferton James. I argue that album covers are often the starting point for the development of a musician’s design culture.
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Notes
- 1.
The MoMA at NGV|NGV (2018) exhibition provides a useful entry point for a discussion of the canon of album cover designs. For a broader discussion of this canon of work, see Spampinato (2017). Spampinato examined the relationship between visual and music production since the rise of modernism and he included Luigi Russolo’s 1913 Futurist manifesto L’Arte dei Rumori (The Art of Noise), Marcel Duchamp’s 1925 double-sided discs Rotereliefs, Banksy’s stencilled graffiti for the band Blur, Damien Hirst’s synecdoche skull for the band The Hours, and a skewered Salvador Dali butterfly on Jackie Gleason’s Lonesome echo album in his overview of 500 album cover designs.
- 2.
According to Gardner (2013), The Velvet Underground and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts agreed to confidentially settle a dispute over the iconic cover art for the 1967 album The Velvet Underground & Nico. Gardner (2013) noted that the Andy Warhol-created artwork became the ‘subject of legal controversy after reports circulated that the Foundation planned to license the design for iPod and iPad ancillary products. In January 2012, Velvet Underground … sued in New York federal court with the claim that the artwork had become ‘a symbol, truly an icon, of the Velvet Underground’ for decades. This case highlights the need to rethink and redesign how album art is managed within the music business.
- 3.
Bowie’s single ‘Without you’ was also one of the songs on his 15th studio album Let’s dance, which was also released in 1983.
- 4.
See Spampinato (2017) for a broader discussion of how art movements such as pop art, modernism, conceptual art, post-modernism and various forms of contemporary art practice have informed the field of album cover design. With 500 covers and records that were produced to support the mass distribution of music, Spampinato’s text provides a broad outline of the canon of album cover designs that is beyond the scope of this chapter to address.
- 5.
Canadian-born Vince Bannon founded Detroit, USA-based concert promotion company Ritual (which was subsequently sold to Clear Channel Entertainment) and has also worked as a senior executive at Sony Music, and as an executive at Getty Images.
- 6.
In a parallel with the world of opera, my colleague at the University of Melbourne, Dr. Brian Long pointed out that Richard Wagner had his idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk: the idea that stage design and text were as important to opera as was the music. For Wagner, good design could combine with good music to produce a third artefact that is greater than the sum of its parts.
- 7.
Rowan Brand and I co-managed the Australian band Boy and Bear from 2008 through 2012.
- 8.
Bear’s Den is a British folk-rock band from London, formed in 2012. They have released three studio albums to date (Bear’s Den 2019).
- 9.
In my earlier co-written work (Hughes, Evans, Morrow and Keith 2016), we argued that there has been a paradigm shift from linear to circular career development in what we refer to as the ‘new music industries’. As I outlined in Morrow (2018b) until quite recently, musicians sought attention from industry gatekeepers first and this is what is meant by linear career development (artist–industry–industry–industry–fan). Circular career development is an inversion of this process. It features the artist sharing his/her music online with potential fans/consumers first to see if it resonates.
- 10.
Hesmondhalgh and Baker (2011, p. 149) discussed the fact that it is a problem when creative labourers over-identify with their work because their career is fragile and uncertain. Being highly personally and emotionally invested in something so fragile and fleeting can lead to mental health issues, hence the term ‘over’-identify.
- 11.
For reasons of confidentiality, the band’s name will not be used here. Suffice to say that at the time they were signed to a mid-sized record label and were an up-and-coming Sydney band with a growing international audience.
- 12.
Josh Pyke is a multi-Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) award-winning Australian singer–songwriter. He has released five studio albums to date (Pyke 2019).
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Morrow, G. (2020). Album Cover Design. In: Designing the Music Business. Music Business Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48114-8_3
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