ALBUM COVERS

Kate Bush – Never For Ever

Kate Bush is presented standing on the top of a hill with the skirt of her dress blowing up to reveal a menagerie of mythical and fantastical creatures flying out from her.

This is to suggest that a lot of her creativity and imagination comes from her being a woman, and also to remark upon her songs' sexual and feminine content.

Kate Bushs’ audience are prominently female, which I think is made clear by the fact that although the cover is of a sexual nature, it is more leaning towards empowering women as opposed to enticing men.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Fever To Tell

The band are represented on the album cover as cartoon drawings on an illustrated background. The band are drawn surrounded by large snakes, the members heads’ on fire, holding up blood red string which connects in the centre around the lead singer Karen O’s body to form the title of the album ‘Fever to Tell’.

The dangerous animals and weaponry, the bleak landscape which they stand on, and the predominantly red and black colour scheme contribute to a very violent and exciting cover design. The style of the cover mirrors the bands’ wild and powerful music.

The target audience of Yeah Yeah Yeahs are older teenagers and young adults who like alternative, punky music. They will like this cover because it has an aggressive and rebelliousness about it.

He is Legend – It Hates You

The band do not appear on this album cover, what does, however, appears to be a pterodactyl shooting a beam of red light out of its mouth onto an ostriches head. I believe that the dark red beam could be representative of the idea that ‘it hates you’. The pterodactyl being ‘it’, the red beam being ‘hate, and the ostrich being ‘you’.

Another feature on the cover is the name of the band and album in broken typewriter lettering. The background is a sickly yellow and dark green colour.

The unappealing colour scheme and strange images chosen for the album design suggests that this music is both very likely to be offensive and unconventional, and might be the bands way of acknowledging that their music is not for everyone, while also conveying that if you don’t like it, they don’t care.

Prince – Purple Rain

This cover features the artist Prince, sitting astride a huge personalised purple motorcycle, in a purple suit, purple writing above his head, very 80s fake smoke rising up behind him, a woman standing silhouetted in an open doorway, breasts barely concealed, all set on a vibrant background of bright flowers.

The excessive colour purple is their to emphasize the album name, and also marks the beginning of his trademark shade of choice. When I look at this cover, Prince’s well known large ego springs to mind, which I think is probably the point of this cover; if you love Prince, you embrace the fact that he loves himself.

This cover is a hilarious example of his loveable arrogance, and will appeal to people who love pop, dance, and self indulgent nonsense songs.

Michael Jackson –Bad

This cover is obvious and brilliant, simply Michael, being bad. The use of black against a white background, overlaid with a splash of red, is very effective at conveying the idea of rebellion; Michael’s bold black name looking like it is being defaced by the red graffiti style of the word ‘BAD’.

Michael himself is dressed to match the rest of the cover, black and white shirt, black trousers, and a black leather jacket with metal studs. Above his head to the left is information about bonus tracks, this is also black writing, on a background of a splash of red.

The whole thing together is very visually pleasing, the three main colours being used to show that the music is as edgy and cool as the cover.

Spinal Tap – Smell the Glove

Simple, beautiful, classic.

Reminiscent of The Beatles' White Album, perhaps this is Spinal Tap's attempt to follow in their footsteps of success. With the imagery of rock metal, the black (resembling black leather) represents death. With every film in every cinema being about death, the ideology of death sells.

Spinal Taps target audience are clearly people who like dark, heavy rock.

How much more black could this be? And the answer is none, none more black.

David Bowie – The Labyrinth Soundtrack

The cover for this CD is almost identical to the movie cover of the film ‘Labyrinth’, which David Bowie starred in whilst also having written most of the score. It is similar so that it helps people realise what the music is from, and shows that this CD is for people who have seen the movie, or like David Bowie.

Down the side of the cover it says which artists worked on the music, largest and most visible is the name David Bowie, this is because he is a popular and well known artist and this would help sell the CD. The CD and movie cover being the same works as a synergy, as if you listen to the CD and like it you would also get the film, and vice versa.

For someone who hasn’t seen the film the CD cover is still appealing because it features David Bowie as the focal point, his head against the background of a labyrinth. Beneath him is are mythical creatures, a castle, and a girl who looks like a princess.

This CD has a select target audience, mainly people who have seen the film, so either younger children, or more likely, people who have an interest in cult film.

Franz Ferdinand – You could have it so much better

This album design has done something which is uncommon on album covers, to have the name of the band, but not the name of the album. Confusing, especially since Franz Ferdinand's’ previous album was also called ‘Franz Ferdinand’.

The image on the cover is a pastiche of a famous portrait for the soviet publisher Gosidat, of Lilya Brik shouting ‘BOOKS’ by Alexander Rodchenko, the Russian avant-garde photographer. In this image, instead of shouting about literacy, the woman is shouting the name of the band.

Another arty feature of this cover is that the woman has been illustrated in ‘pop-art’ style, the cover has managed to effectively mix a 60’s American art movement with the Russian soviet art movement.

The interest in art fits in with the bands ‘indie’ image, and would attract the attention of mature, indie, arty teenagers who make up their target audience.

Muse – Origin of Symmetry

I like how contradictory the colour scheme is on this album cover. Bright yellow, which is usually associated with joy and happiness, has been teamed here with the bleak, off-white, grey and black combination.

The illustrations on the cover are also bleak, tall grey poles widely spaced on a white, nothingness landscape, casting long black shadows on the ground. Along the top left of the cover is the name of the band and album in simple, black, block lettering.

Due to it being extremely minimalistic and abstracted, the design has a very eerie feel about it; from just seeing this imagery I doubt an audience would know what to expect from muse’s music apart from that it is alternative and strange, and sometimes sinister.