Album Art and Music

No mention of v23? I’d like to decorate my lounge to Vaughan Oliver’s artwork. Mrs probably wouldn’t agree.

Started my work life in the print industry doing the repro for various record labels. Not 4AD sadly, but I’ve got one or two one offs stashed away in my vinyl collection. Was like getting paid for a hobby.

I got a blue Monday 12’’ from an antique shop, not the silver sleeve one, but still one with the cut outs.

£7, although not great condition it’s nice to own the iconic record that nearly saw factory records off.

And another thing….people make associations between the artwork and the music. They read into it and a great album helps their imagination elevate otherwise average or uninspiring photographs or artwork. On the favourite album cover thread people have posted album covers that are just fonts or stock photos that could be 100 other artists, they just happen to be on good albums (or albums they like). There’s little or no great artwork enhancing or complementing the music.

blue Monday 12”…

Nicer to have owned from when it came out 😉

Trying to reply to jimjam too, but can’t copy and paste – you’re right, I mean the music I dislike (eg. Yes, Pink Floyd) the covers look as uninteresting as the music. And the first one in the fave covers thread is bleedin awful! And how anyone can like that GnR one up there is beyond me! 🤪

Yes, look at the artwork on its own objectively. What’s the image about? Does it constitute a strong piece of artwork or photography in its own right in any way shape or form? If the answer’s no then it’s just being elevated by association with the music. If it’s a good piece or artwork how does it compliment or enhance the music etc etc.

The caveat to that would be an album where the cover can be indicative of, or evoking something about the music without the need for art work or photography – an example off the top of my head would be Metallica’s Black Album. There’s no way to argue it’s a great album cover but it works as part of a coherent album theme.

But for the most part people get sentimental about great albums because of the music.

Edit: There are also instances where bands have simply used great existing artwork which either doesn’t compliment the music, is more iconic than the music or doesn’t gel with or concur with the genre or style of music they have.

Only thing I’d say, in agreement with the OP is that the current chart is full of same sounding, fake r’n’b & rap, highly produced on computers, with similar sounding vocals. I’m very open minded to new music and there is the occasional one that’s ok, but I don’t ever recall a time when the most mainstream of pop has been so dull and uninteresting.

On this, DezB and I are in total agreement, every word of that reflects my feelings absolutely. There is just so much really great music around, far too much to be able to do more than really scratch the surface of what Soundcloud and Bandcamp offer, let alone the main streaming music sources, my main issue with those is the algorithms they use, like Amazon’s ‘if you like this, then you’ll like this’, when I don’t want to hear more of the same, I want to hear something that I haven’t heard before that isn’t necessarily like what I already like! Which is why I like 6Music, where something often pops up from someone I’ve never heard of before that just makes me grab my phone and fire up Shazam.

blue Monday 12”…

Nicer to have owned from when it came out

Like my copy! I’ve got a shitload of 12” singles, and 7” for that matter, I bought in the late 70’s, early to mid 80’s.

That GnR artwork is horrible.

&

“Only thing I’d say, in agreement with the OP is that the current chart is full of same sounding, fake r’n’b & rap, highly produced on computers, with similar sounding vocals. I’m very open minded to new music and there is the occasional one that’s ok, but I don’t ever recall a time when the most mainstream of pop has been so dull and uninteresting.”

100% .especially similar sounding vox.

We must be getting old. 😉

We must be getting old

Nope. I ain’t having that!

That Van Halen album above reminds me this 

I’d sort of counter the argument about “similar sounding bands”

Thats always been the case IMO. As each band comes along it’s very few who are able to cut the mould and create something original, these days or in days gone by. All bands or artists have some either vague or blatant influence from others in their musical peer group.. Invariably thats why so many bands/artists sound like xxxxxx or yyyyyyy..

Rock has been a hotbed of regurgitating the same three chords for millennia, yet few artists cut through and created something “different” and I’ll surely pick out the Arctic Monkeys purely because they took three chords and jangled the structure up to create something original.. Then came the copycat syndrome and now the band sound similar to many others.

Pop is Pop and written in a similar vein, the era of Stock Atkin and Waterman gave us about 35 bands or artists with similar tone, similar chord progression structures and mixing.. yet a few came out on top of that heap and still today record some rather good tunes in their own style.. but still.. they served an “apprenticeship” by copy/rote and learning off their particular peer group.

Dance, slightly different.. (not talking about Bands per se’ here, Earth Wind and Fire etc for they cut a mould for others to follow and they followed on from the whole Parliament/Funkadelic/Motown movement) but pure Dance.. Sample rule here, someone will cut a track and about 300 DJ’s will remix and mix and alter/change the beats yet the Song (natch) Remains the Same. It’s endemic and accepted and welcomed within the Dance movement for this to be not only acceptable but encouraged.. and I’ll just pick out Avicii as an example.. talented DJ and mixer of all things music in/out of the Dance culture. Avicii took some pretty poor recordings and made them his own, turned them into songs that actually sounded good..

But that is what a good producer does isn’t it? Take some song or other that an artist or band lays down then adds something to the mix for it to be created into something half decent.. Todays crop of copy cats are mimics in the highest order and YouTube is, and will now always be, a major influence of how people get into the music industry. It’s so easy to flick around and see some 17 girl wearing a low cut vest sitting on a sofa strumming some barely palpable tune yet gets 1.8m watches.. It’s clear the girl must have some vague talent and self esteem to sit in front of an iPhone and strum 7 chords in sequence whilst humming adding an occasional bounce on the sofa to “enhance” the viewers “enjoyment” of the video.. You see it all the time. And ratings are the major measure of “success” so.. One girl wears a low cut vest and strums, another does the same thing wearing a lower cut vest and so on until the watcher gets bored of boob watching and goes seeks out some half decent artist or tune..

Nothing’s cyclical in music, it’s one vast steady stream of noise around the fringes with quality cutting the groove.

IMO.

If anyone could be bothered to trawl through the No.1 records of the 90s and early 2000s I’m guessing there will also be week after week of soundalike trash, we only remember the good stuff or the truly terrible.

I bet during PWL’s (ahem) peak the charts were full of a right variety of crap. More so than they are now.

I shall check shortly!

You just need to look harder. Most of my stuff is on vinyl and that includes new LPs pretty much every week.

Digital is great for new bands and giving people choice.

Both formats bring something to the table.

Who needs to look harder for what?

Bono. For what he’s looking for.

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..but he might also be refering to the OP who it seems has pissed off to further indulge his thread starting fetish.

😀

The OP needs to look harder if he wants to find new album art. Plenty out there, just not quite as readily available as it once was.