Iconic Album Covers.

The album cover to a great single/ep is very important. It is the first point of view from the audience’s eyes, thus it needs to be captivating and catch their interest instantly. It is more than a marketing device, it creates the music visually.
The Sex Pistols Iconic album – Nevermind the Bollocks, was a very popular album. The publicity that the sex pistols already held didn’t make it necessary to include their faces within the cover. The design of the album was supposed to be made to look “easy and fun”. Reid the designer called the art “cheap hype”. The ransom note lettering that he used was increasingly imitated by other bands of a similar genre.  

Another popular band was – The Clash. They performed their album “London Calling” on September 21^st 1979 at New York’s palladium. Simonon was seen smashing his bass guitar up at the concert due to him thinking that the show wasn’t going as well as he planned. They took a photo of him doing this and put it onto the front cover of their album, interpreting a more performance base display of the band rather than considering art form like The Sex Pistols.

 However the most famous album cover of all time would have to be Nirvana’s Nevermind. The album cover displays a young boy in a swimming pool, with a dollar floating beside him. The boy in the photo never received anything from Nirvana for being in the cover, at the time of being photographed, Nirvana weren’t that popular. However now Spencer Elden has recreated the cover to celebrate the 20^th anniversary of “Nevermind”  - Elden was interviewed at this celebration and he was asked his opinion on the album and the band, his response was “I like Nirvana a lot and there are no songs that I don’t like — they all have a special place for people”. The reason for the album cover was because Kurt cobain had seen a T.V. program on water births and thought it was an interesting image. After the picture was taken he thought it would be cool to add the dollar on a fish hook.

 

 

A Day To Remember – What separates me from you?

The album cover illustrates the name of the album. The man trapped illustrates his separation from the crowd that surrounds him. The glass between him and the rest of the audience acts as a barrier, in that they belong together and he is isolated. The band were interviewed and they were asked what made them choose the album cover – “We've had a different person do almost every record. I go with the person I'm feeling for the project. I wanted the artwork for What Separates Me from you to be a little more serious. It has the vibe of a painting.” The image connotes a message across to the audience of the album. It might attract an audience that feel the same way as what is displayed in the image – a subculture that feel isolated from others. Also the fact that A Day To Remember are of rock genre, which tries to isolate itself from mainstream culture also could be linked to the album cover. The singer Jeremy McKinnon said “It's like you're separated from everybody else. It was definitely important and I'm always conscious of stuff like that.” Reaching out to that audience, creating another subculture almost, that feels isolated from the rest of society.