We’re a little late with posting this one but Ty Lettau) has created a series of minimalist album covers. Why? No reason it’s just what designers do. The set has been pretty successful for Ty on Flickr. You might think Ty is an unemployed designer with nothing better to do? But he’s actually the designer manager at Adobe! So obviously he’s a designer that never sleeps!

What I think appeals about these series is the fact they become a puzzle. Without looking at the title you try and guess the cover. With album covers being some of the most iconic design of our time it’s not wonder designers are fascinated by them. No other piece of design lasts this long or is as instantly recognisable as an album cover. Movie posters come close but only few films can say they have iconic posters.

Below are all the covers Ty produced. I didn’t upload the Coldplay ones as they were basically the same as the originals.

View the post on the original The Black Crowes Amorica cover here.

View the post on the original Metallica The Black Album cover here.

View the post on the original Nirvana Nevermind cover here.

This set is very different from the previous set (the Modernist series) we posted back in 2009. There you can see the video game covers, movie poster and much more. Olly Moss has a lot to answer for as there is no shortage of these “minimal” or “retro” design series and they show no signs of slowing down.

Note: I’ll also post up the sushi and lego cover remakes after I collect all the images out there. Does anyone know any other “album cover remakes” I should cover?

Israeli-born illustrator Emek is one of the talents keeping poster art alive. Described by Henry Rollins as the “thinking man’s poster artist”, Emek continues many of the traditions of 1960′s psychedelia. His work is always hand drawn and heavily layered, mashing the political and personal; the organic and technical.

Yet despite his prolific collaborations with some of music’s biggest names, there’s one artist he was born to work with. “Working with Erykah,” he says “always brings out the best in me… I’ve worked with hundreds of bands, and I have to say that she is pretty unique. What kind of musician would fly an artist halfway across the country just to discuss the ideas of the album cover in person? And then cook them a wonderful vegan meal and play charades with her kids? Erykah, thats who.”

Emek first worked with Badu on 2008′s critically acclaimed New Amerykah Part One (4^th World War). Note: read the Sleevage post for that album here. On that cover, Emek focused on the “politics and social conditions in the world today, things that were weighing on her mind.” It was a dark but dynamic image, with Badu sporting knuckle dusters, her trademark afro entangled with the corrupted baubles of contemporary urban life.

When Emek listened to New Amerykah Part Two (Return of the Ankh), he discovered a new groove-based sound that was “more personal”. The resulting cover art retains the political symbolism – keen eyes will notice new references to foreclosed homes and the Tea Party  movement – but this time they’ve receded to the background. We get the feeling that a confident and all-conquering Badu has transcended them.

“You built a wall 20 feet tall / But if I get off my knees / I might recall I’m 20 feet tall”, she sings. Emek states that this lyric “was an inspiration to draw her to be a large face. She is 20 feet tall”. Her armour represents the way she is protected from the “harsh realities of life”, while the “color purple of the tree and the sky represent the 7th chakra”.

In many ways, both Badu and Emek are throwbacks. Badu made her name as a pioneer of neo-soul, and her early output triggered countless Billie Holiday comparisons. While never allowing her sound to stagnate, she’s consistently skated the fine line between batshit-crazy and inspired. Witness the video clip for her 2010 single Window Seat, which sees her stripping naked at the site where President Kennedy was assassinated, before pretending to be shot.

An artist as brave as Badu no doubt needs the armour Emek has painted her. Just as he needs musicians of her calibre to inspire his work. “Both Erykah and I were raised without a TV in our house, we grew up on record cover art”, he says. Let’s hope there are kids out there today being inspired by Badu and Emek.

Pip Brown, the New Zealand-born multi-instrumentalist better known as Ladyhawke, has overcome a fair bit of misfortune in her young life. At the age of ten she was diagnosed with a disease called erysipeloid, which is common in seagulls but hadn’t been seen in humans in 20 years. If that’s not bad enough, she’s allergic to all forms of antibiotics and penicillin, which complicated her treatment so much that she ended up in a coma.

After coming close to death, she recovered only to discover in the coming years that she had Asberger’s syndrome, a form of autism that makes social interaction difficult. So how did a sickly, socially awkward New Zealand teen go onto become on of the most exciting musical artists we have today? Well a formidable talent, drive and sense of adventure have come in handy.

Brown was only a teenager in New Zealand when she formed the band Two Lane Blacktop with some friends. They went on to play at legendary New York club CBCG. Then on an impulse, Brown moved to Melbourne where she formed the band Teenager with Nick Littlemore (Empire of the Sun).

But it was her decision to leave Teenager and focus on her solo project, Ladyhawke, that shot her to prominence. Ladyhawke is named after the 1985 cult film, in which a radiant Michelle Pfeiffer played the cursed title character.

Bird references seem fitting, given that Brown was nearly killed by a seagull’s disease and that her whole life since represents a phoenix-like resurrection. She says the name represents the way she sees herself – as “a pop superwoman creating radio-friendly songs with a single bound”. Either which way, it’s a killer name.

Rightly or wrongly, Ladyhawke’s 1980’s influenced dance music has seen her grouped with other contemporary singers such as La Roux, Little Gaga, Sia and Little Boots. All have distinctive looks, visual style and more than a taste of androgyny.

Which brings us to Ladyhawke’s cover art. The illustrated watercolour and ink drawings that feature on her records and in her music videos have helped define her brand.  They’re by 31-year old Melbourne artist Sarah Larnach, who is not only Brown’s collaborator but also her best friend.

Larnach first saw Brown at a Melbourne party in 2004, where she immediately noticed her “mopey posture, unlike anything I’d seen on a girl.” Speaking to The Independent in an article about their friendship, Larnach recalled: “She seemed really cool and I immediately wanted her to be my friend, but I didn’t want to freak her out, so I didn’t even talk to her.”

They lived close together and soon became friends. “I had a large of group of friends, but never a best friend, so it was great meeting Sarah,” says Brown. “Straight off the bat I found her hilarious. Sense of humour is key for me – if I find someone completely unwitty, I can’t even bluff getting along with them. She is sharp and intelligent and I enjoy every second of conversations with her.”

Larnach was a slack student at art school and lacked confidence in her work. Brown observes: “She is the biggest procrastinator in the world, but I always thought she was an incredible artist – she has a brilliant imagination. When she first plucked up the courage to show me some of her art I was so impressed. I ended up posing for her for heaps of paintings, so I became a bit like a muse, though I wouldn’t quite call myself that.”

It’s a fair description however, as the collaboration between the two has created a career for Larnach. “As soon as I met Pip I knew she was going to be really significant, not just in my life, but in general, and I knew I’d do anything to help her. Maybe I’ve helped her a bit, but she has helped me a great deal.”

If popular culture has taught us anything, it’s that we should never trust suburban bliss. Whether it’s in classic films like American Beauty and Blue Velvet or small screen hits like Desperate Housewives, manicured lawns and picket fences are invariably a front for dysfunctions, neurosis and murder.

And so it is with the Grammy Award-winning artwork for Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, the 2008 collaboration between Brian Eno and David Byrne. While it initially resembles a screen shot from The Sims, upon closer inspection the picture gets much darker.

The packaging was designed by Stefan Sagmeister design house Sagmeister Inc,. “I loved the music right away” recalls Sagmeister “it was new; it was different from anything they had done before.” After a few listens, the designers noted the contrast between the “exuberant” music and the “dark edge” of the lyrics.

The inspiration for the cover was Home, one of the record’s key tracks, where Byrne sings:

Home – such a funny feeling
Home – no one ever speaking
Home – with our bodies touching
Home – and the cameras watching

While the track sounds sunny and uplifting, it’s clear that “not everything is all hunky dory”, as Sagmeister puts it. So after creating the pixilated perfection on the record’s cover, the designers then fill the booklet with “clues that allow the viewer to put his or her own story together”.

We make out a shady figure clutching binoculars in one of the windows. Band-aids sit on the back porch, while a condom wrapper can be spotted in the roof’s gutter. And that’s before we discover the ominously armoured door, which presumably leads down to a cellar.

But why the pixilated aesthetic? The answer may lie in the music. Brian Eno describes the collaboration as combining “something very human and fallible and personal, with something very electronic and mathematical sometimes.” He says that he and Byrne tried to “make that picture of the human still trying to survive in an increasingly complicated digital world.”

The incredible deluxe packaging comes in a tin (described by Sagmeister as a “jewel box”) that models the suburban environment in 3D.  Upon opening, a microchip plays the sound of footsteps walking down a corridor and slamming a creaky door. The experience is so rich that by the time you reach the great record by Eno and Byrne, it simply feels like a welcome bonus.

We may not be able to trust suburban bliss, but with designers like Sagmeister around, perhaps we can still rely on the simple pleasures of kick-ass cover art – even in our increasingly digital world.

This article originally appeared in Monster Children Magazine

Things have been pretty quiet around here, we know. But we’re back baby and if you’ve missed your fix of fresh sleeves, the good news is we’re on the job.

“Females”, says British artist Jenny Saville, “are used to being looked at.” As one of the most successful painters of the last two decades, Saville has kept her gaze firmly on the female form.

She made her name with large-scale paintings of almost grotesquely fleshy women. The obsession started during her studies at the University of Cincinnati, where she encountered: “Lots of big women. Big white flesh in shorts and T-shirts.”

The Manic Street Preachers are long-time fans of Saville’s work, having used her painting Strategy on the cover of their third album, 1994’s The Holy Bible.

At that time Richey Edwards was still the band’s lyricist, while Saville was one of the bright stars of the “Young British Artist” movement. Edwards disappeared mysteriously in 1995 and was only declared “presumed deceased” in November 2008.

Journal for Plague Lovers, Manic Street Preachers’ ninth album, is comprised entirely of lyrics that he left behind. Explaining the tribute on their official website, the band said that all “13 songs on the new record feature lyrics left to us by Richey. The brilliance and intelligence of the lyrics dictated that we had to finally use them.”

The band also felt compelled to use Saville’s 2005 painting Stare for the cover. Frontman Jame Dean Bradfield told BBC “We just thought it was a beautiful painting. We were all in total agreement. We just saw a much more modern version of Lucian Freud-esque brushstrokes.”

Inspired by a newspaper cutting, the painting depicts an androgynous girl with a large birthmark on her face. But when presented with the image on a CD cover, Britain’s main supermarket chains saw something else entirely. Thinking that the image depicted a young buy with a bloodied face, they deemed the cover “inappropriate” and refused to carry the album unless it was shipped in a plain slipcover.

Nicola Williamson, Sainsbury’s music buyer, said: “We felt that some customers might consider this particular album cover to be inappropriate if it were prominently displayed on the shelf.”

Having unwittingly contributed a new entry into the pantheon of banned album covers, Bradfield described the situation as “utterly bizarre”. “You can have lovely shiny buttocks and guns everywhere in the supermarket on covers of magazines and CDs, but you show a piece of art and people just freak out,” he said.

“A large female body has a power, it occupies a physical space, yet there’s an anxiety about it.” Saville once said of her art, “It has to be hidden.” Many are distressed that the same seems to be the case for a disfigured tomboy.

Journal for Plague Lovers may have been the most controversial cover of 2009, having accidentally sparked a dialogue about art, the body and censorship. You’d like to think that Richey Edwards, known for his highly political songwriting, is smiling somewhere.

This article was first featured in Monster Children Magazine

Agnes Montgomery is a Philadelphia-based artist that works in collage. Her work has been been getting heaps of attention since she was tapped by Animal Collective member Panda Bear (aka Noah Lennox) to create the cover art for his highly-acclaimed solo release Person Pitch (2007).

“Noah is a good friend of mine”, Montgomery told us, “I showed him my collages back in 2003 and he liked them a lot.”

It’s easy to see what appealed to him. Montgomery creates her collages on a miniscule scale, using small scissors, found paper and a magnifying lamp. She then enlarges them and prints them on large canvases. The result is a striking and warm juxtaposition of images that is at once nostalgic and contemporary. Children make regular appearances, reinforcing the feeling of whimsy and innocent wonder.

Lennox recognised its potential as cover art: “Noah asked me if I’d like to make some collages for his next solo record and we talked and thought about it for a long time before it really started to happen.” While there may have been a lengthy germinating process, Lennox prefers to work very quickly. In contrast to Montgomery’s process, he likes to “spit it out real fast”.

“I get impatient writing songs, I can’t spend more than a couple of hours before I get frustrated” he is quoted as saying. “My favorite songs are the ones where I worked really really fast on, when it comes all out in like two hours or something.”

You would expect the end result to be shallow or sloppy, however the output belies Lennox’s professed impatience. His songs, as chief-supporter Pitchfork describe them, “consist of intricately constructed, heavily layered and highly repetitive loops on top of which Lennox sings oddly familiar and touching melodies.”

The music “sounds like what it is: one guy alone in his bedroom trolling though music history, picking and choosing bits to make something deeply personal and all his own”.

The parallels with Montgomery’s process was not lost on Lennox. “He liked the idea of collage cut paper for the album art since he was also working in a style of collage musically, cutting up samples” she says.

“The songs of Person Pitch inspired the collages. I listened to the songs over and over again during the course of a year to fully immerse myself into them and to try my best to make a visual match.”

“We corresponded mostly by email since he was living abroad in Portugal at the time. Noah didn’t give too much input as to what he was hoping for. He gave me a lot of freedom and space to just see what could happen. He already had a pretty good sense of my style and he thought it could work well with the songs.”

“Noah sent me one song at a time and I made a collage to match its song so they could be released as singles first.”

For the Person Pitch cover, Montgomery worked with both Lennox and designer Rob Carmicheal. “Visually the packaging being symmetrical was important to Noah. He had the idea of the layout and how he wanted the thank you’s and inspiration to be centered with 2 collages on either side of the flip fold out insert.”

“The album is kind of symmetrical in terms of how long the songs are, and I wanted the album art to reflect that” says Lennox. “I knew I wanted to do a lot of personal thank yous and I knew I wanted to have the artwork from all the singles on there in a symmetrical fashion. So I needed another text panel, and I also thought that since I was sampling so many different people I thought it was appropriate to give thanks to other musicians.”

This eclectic and much-discussed list of musicians included Cat Stevens, Daft Punk, Black Dice, Pink Floyd, The Beach Boys, Vashti Bunyan, Ariel Pink, Aphex Twins, The Beatles, Michael Jackson, Jay-Z, Talk Talk, Kylie Minogue, Ennio Morricone, Metallica, Wu-Tang Clan, Nina Simone, The Strokes, Dr Dre, Notorious B.I.G., Nirvana, Echo & the Bunnymen, Enya, George Michael, Gratefull Dead, Maria Callas, Phil Collins and New Order. Whew!

On the cover of Person Pitch, a children’s pool party has been crashed by the inhabitants of a petting zoo. The result is squishy, psychedelic and oddly comforting, much like the music within. You could argue that these disparate party goers are an analogy for the album’s varied influences. Whatever the meaning, it’s a memorable image that acts as the perfect visual foil for Panda Bear’s beautiful music.

Is it just me or is all the innovative cover art being done for the least likely bands. Does being popular dictate that you must be safe? Beck would be the only mainstream artists who are doing anything innovative. Moldover, Menomena, ALB, Bright Eyes, Beck and Pine Bender all have innovative covers and yet they would be the bands you’d think would have little budget to do anything but a standard 4 colour jewel case.

Zinplaat’s 4th album Mooi Besoedeling is another innovative album cover. The cover and back are printed with scratch off ink. Like an instant scratchy. The cover appears to be a very simple design and yet hides a very different cover under the ink.

The designers at Fanakalo gave me this brief overview of the covers design.

Zinkplaat is an Afrikaans pop-rock-blues-fusion band from South Africa. The name Zinkplaat is the Afrikaans word for corrugated metal. This, their fourth album comes shrink-wrapped with a scratch-off ink layer on the front and back, as well as a guitar pick to scratch the ink off with. The album’s name ‘Mooi Besoedeling’ translates to ‘Beautiful Pollution’. Their brief was to create a universal artwork that didn’t form one central image, plastered on the front, which serves as a metaphor for the album title.

We responded by creating a colourful collage that represents the band’s various diverse influences coming together to create something new. The silver scratch-off ink resembles corrugated metal and we also designed the actual disc to have the unpressed silver form part of the design. We believe this is a very good functional solution to the fact that a simplistic clean cd cover design stands out most from all the clutter on a store shelf, yet is very boring once bought. We leave the concept open to interpretation, as it can be read as the silver layer being pollution or the fact that by scratching off the ink you ‘damage’ your packaging. However one wants to read the album as a concept, at least it’s very interactive seeing as people seem to love the scratch-off ink…

I have a copy of the album with me (I requested it ASAP after seeing the video below) but now I’m too precious to scratch it off. Luckily there’s already a good set of photos. I prefer the half scratched off look personally. The random montage of images works best when revealed through frantic scratching. I bet anyone seeing this half scratched cover on my desk at work could not resist having a scratch.

I’d love to get a poster made of this scratch off ink.

The back cover also got the same ink treatment.

I asked Rohan at Fanakalo if the printing was expensive, which for a small band not doing hundreds of thousand copies might be a major issue. Also was it was tough to convince the band to go forward with it?

The band signed off on it immediately because they briefed us wanting something ‘never done before’. We printed through an agent (hybrid media solutions) who outsourced the printing to Asia, so the cost wasn’t ridiculously expensive.

I guess it’s the band are willing to spend the extra money on the final product. When not looking solely at profit, you have the vision to think about the package as a whole (experience and the music) rather than just the $$$.

I also asked what the response has been in South Africa and record shops.

South Africa’s music industry is very small and monopolised (there’s only 2 big stores/franchises) – and the other thing is that Zinkplaat is an Afrikaans band, which makes it even harder for them to get shelf space because they compete directly with international albums. But after printing and selling the first batch the record store ordered an extra batch about 3 weeks after the album was launched, which is quite a feat in SA. Normally the record store doesn’t request music from local artists.

I asked about the language, as this is the first Afrikaans band I have been exposed to. Why not sign in English or is it like Rammstein?

In a country where we know Afrikaans and English we love having music that is only Afrikaans and only we can understand. Afrikaans is also a very beautiful language which is often much more descriptive and poetic than English.

Some bands from south africa worth checking out:
dear reader
aking
new holland
thieve
die heuwels fantasties

All credit to the band for putting the album together but you have to give credit to the designers for creating something which gives the band a point of difference.

I also like the inside band photo by Mark Reitz. I can’t help but think of The Hangover when I see this.

We were also sent some work in progress artwork for what the cover could have been. Rohan said;

the two montages was the direction we went first and realised it was too ‘picture’ – so we went more abstract and got to the final design. the montages sort of ended up being mood boards

And the designers also made a wine label (for the launch party and merch) and T-Shirt design from the cover.

Seeing the wine label gave me an idea, only to find that it had already been done with Wines That Rock. To make it worse the company only launched in October this year. Damn! I should ask for a freebie for pimping it here :)

You can check out more on Zinkplaat on their Facebook page or Myspace page.

It’s the interactivity of the cover that I like. Like all the covers I mentioned at the top of the post, they all give you something to do with the packaging once you hold it in your hands. It’s not just an elaborate packaging job whose sole purpose is to not fit in your CD holder (do people still have CD holders?) This is something you can’t experience just by looking at it. Even the best piece of typography can be experienced by looking at a jpeg however these need to be held, opened and played with.

Bob Hund (“Bob Dog” in Swedish) are a Scandinavian indie band that were formed in 1991. Along the way, they’ve gathered a loyal following, picked up some Swedish Grammys and spawned an English-language side project called Bergman Rock. They’ve also commissioned some pretty cool cover art, which is notable for the fact that it comes from the one designer. Martin Kann has worked with the band for over 15 years and his output has been extremely varied.

It’s a fruitful relationship, so we thought we’d get in touch with the talented Swede to find out a little more.

Bob Hund: CD cover (1993)

Bob Hund: CD cover (1994)

How did you start working with the band?

Thomas Öberg (the singer), Jonas Jonasson (the keyboard player) and I know each other since way back. When the band was formed, Öberg called me and asked if I could design their logo – which lead to doing their covers, back drops, merchandise and all that.

Your relationship has been very long-term. Why do you think that is?

Apart from being longtime friends, I spend a lot of time time with the band on a social level. It gives me so many insights, which are a unique source for the design. Throughout the years the band and I have grown together so closely that neither of us can get rid of each other.

Instant Life (1994)

Bob Hund: CD cover (1994)

Bob Hund: LP cover (1996)

The covers you create for them are very varied. How do you approach each one? What kind of brief do they give you?

I usually get into the process when the band is in the studio and a working title is set. My approach is always idea driven, which means that the idea dictates the design. That way my design is often content based. I never decorate and I never consider if something is beautiful or ugly. Those are subjective words irrelevant to the idea.

Regarding a brief there never is one.

Bergman Rock: I’m a crab (1998)

Bob Hund: My Soul Is For Sale! Everything Must Go! (1998)

Bob Hund: Bob Hund Never Sleeps (1999)

How involved are the band in in the process?

Bob Hund and Bergman Rock are a very unique client when it comes to involvement. They more or less give me total freedom to decide what I want. One time they didn’t want to see the cover until it was printed.

Bob Hund: Let the stone age begin (2001)

Bob Hund: 10 Years Backwards and 100 Years Forward (2002)

Bob Hund: CD cover (2002)

Bob Hund: LP cover (2002)

Bob Hund: The New That Was Supposed To Be So Good (2002)

Bergman Rock: Jim (2004)

What is your favourite cover you’ve done for them?

Hard to say.

I put a lot of emotions into all my covers when I’m in the process, so they are all special to me. But if I’m forced to pick one it would probably be “Fantastiskt” from 2009.

It is a vinyl 12″ single made in an edition of 1. The record is glued to a real turntable acting as package with the lyrics etched on the lid. It sold on e-Bay for 3,650 USD and became the most expensive record ever sold in Sweden.

Since forming in 1981, Metallica has become one of the world’s biggest selling bands, with over 50 million albums sold in the US alone. They’ve won 9 Grammy Awards and – from the battle over their first release through to the celebrated packaging for Death Magnetic – have created significant cover art as well.

Kill ‘Em All (1983)

This release was to be called Metal Up Your Ass and the cover was supposed to feature a toilet bowl with a hand clutching a dagger emerging from it. After significant pressure to reconsider, the band settled on Kill ‘Em All as an angry response and used the artwork for tour t-shirts instead.

Ride the Lightning (1984)

Master of Puppets (1986)

One of the most acclaimed metal albums of all time. Many prints of the 1986 release featured a parody of the PMRC “explicit lyrics” warning labels.

And Justice for All (1988)

The cover was made by Stephen Gorman based on a concept by James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich.

Metallica (1991)

Also popularly known as the Black Album, this is the second best selling album of the Soundscan era. Read a previous Sleevage entry about it here.

Load (1996)

The original artwork on the cover is entitled “Semen and Blood III” and is one of three photos by Andres Serrano, who mixed his own semen with bovine blood between two pieces of Plexiglass. The cover also features a new Metallica logo.   

ReLoad (1997)

Garage Inc (1998)

St Anger (2003)

Brian Schroeder designed the album cover and artwork for St. Anger.  Originally there was meant to be four different limited color variations  but the plans were eventually canceled.

Death Magnetic (2008)

A special edition of this release was packages in a coffin box. Death Magnetic won Best Recording Package at the 51st Grammy Awards.

There’s so much mystery about this cover that perhaps it’s better to start with what we do know. The image was taken by London-based Jake Walters, a commercial photographer with an impressive portfolio across fashion, celebrity and editorial portraiture.

The adorable baby, with its cheeky little expression so at odds with Morrissey’s stern gaze, is the son of Charlie Brown, Morrissey’s assistant tour manager.

Design practice No Allegiances is responsible for the design and packaging. Having noticed the subtle Mexican sounds in the music, they took their cue from Mexican folk art and vintage California. The typography was inspired by the work of legendary illustrator and printmaker José Guadalupe Posada.

The packaging also features a still life, Bodegon Con Jarra de Vino (1914), by A. Fuentes.

Noting the chiaroscuro of both the cover photography and painting, No Allegiances ran the LP and special CD version on fabric-textured stock to “makes the record feel like an oil painting hanging in the Louvre that you shouldn’t have just touched.”

But what does it all mean? The arresting image on the cover of Morrissey’s ninth studio album caused an instant deluge of speculation when it was first surfaced late last year.

Widely reported as celibate, the image of an awkwardly paternal Morrissey seemed unlikely. It also followed two other popular covers where the indie icon held a gun and a violin.

The consensus opinion seemed to be that the title referred to his years of refusing sex and that the baby on the cover symbolically represented an absence born of this choice.

Complicating matters further are the symbols – one of which appears on the baby’s forehead and the other on his arm. When the image first appeared online the file size was too small to fully make these out. Was that a W on the baby’s forehead? Did it represent the outgoing president of the Unites States?

Um, no – the baby has a butterfly on his forehead, while Morrissey’s arm seems to feature a caterpillar. For me, this awkward symbolism is the cover’s one misstep and adds little to what appears to be an instantly iconic image.

If it’s meaning is opaque, it’s no accident. This is after all this is Morrissey – a cultural figure that has always defied easy categorisation. An artist that has referred to himself as being “a fourth sex”; that famously campaign for animal rights and vegetarianism. A man who has flirted with the nationalistic far right and in the nineties developed what Encyclopedia Brittanica described as “a growing homoerotic obsession with criminals, skinheads, and boxers”.

Anticipating speculation about his latest cover, he had already drafted a response on the sleeve notes to The Years of Refusal:

“If you ask why the new album has the title it has (‘Years of Refusal’) and why on the cover he is holding the baby, after holding on previous covers the violin and the gun, because after all people will want to know, or more rumours will spill into the world and its voracious, agitated internet shadow, the sigh will almost crack into real annoyance. If you sail close to the gale force wind and bring up the sticky situations he finds himself in when he talks of his mythical old England, its disappearance and/or cultural and commercial conversion, and heretically flirts with the flag, and faces expulsion from the entertainment scene, then the sigh and the awkwardness will know no bounds.”

There’s a difference between batshit crazy and eccentric. It’s a fine line but Badu manages to stay firmly on the right side of it. By every measure, 2008′s New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) should have been a total disaster.

There’s the unwieldy title, the status as a ‘concept album’, the big messy themes of urban violence, poverty and race relations. One couldn’t help but anticipate an incoherent throwback to a bygone era where hip hop actually took these issues on with honesty and passion.

The cover art certainly evokes that period, with its retro aesthetic. And it cleverly makes the most of Badu’s trademark afro to illustrate just how much the soul diva has on her mind. The Egyptian ankh, which represents life itself, sits at the centre. Around it we see a plethora of instantly recognisable symbols: pumped fists, satellite dishes, televisions, dollar signs and factories share space with malnourished babies, bees, flowers and peace signs.

The knuckle-dusters at the forefront spell out more than the album’s name – they represent her intentions. “To my folks on the picket line, don’t stop till you change they mind” is just an indicative sample of the fighting words found throughout.

It’s a really cool cover that manages to take on big issues in a striking and cohesive fashion. Much like the music itself, which defied perceptions to become a major critical and modest commercial success. New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) represents a career high for the talented musician and image maker.

At the same time the album hit stores, the video for debut single Honey was released. It sees her fittingly paying tribute to some of the greatest covers ever made. Check the full video out here

In a classic Saturday Night Live Sketch in 2000, the show satirised the game show Celebrity Jeopardy – skewering both Robin Williams and Catherine Zeta Jones. But the breakout star of the sketch was comedian Darrel Hammond’s Sean Connery, who introduced the term “anal bum cover” in this memorable exchange:

Alex Trebek: For the last time, that is not a category. Sean Connery, why don’t you pick?

Sean Connery: Well, the game is afoot. I’ll take anal bum cover for 7,000.

Alex Trebek: That’s “An album cover”, not anal bum cover.

Sean Connery: I can read, Trebek. That says Anal bum cover. I’ve spent five years of my life trying to invent an anal bum cover, failing to do so is my greatest regret.

So in tribute to this obscure but resilient meme, we celebrate 7 great covers with backsides on the brain. Bottoms up!

Bruce Springsteen: Born in the USA (1984)

The undisputed heavyweight of album covers with bottoms on their front belongs to The Boss.

Born in the USA was the best-selling album of 1985 and shares the record for the most top ten hits from a single release. Springsteen was already a big star but, as one commentator puts it, it wasn’t until he “hit the gym to get buffed up and showed off his rear end in Annie Leibovitz’s famous cover photo for Born in the USA that he became an American pop icon.”

Springsteen’s new image came at just the right moment, as Rambo was hitting cinemas and Reagan was ushering in a period of muscular nationalism.

The irony that underscores this cover is that the vast majority of Springsteen’s new fans radically misinterpreted his lyrics and ideology. The patriots that packed stadiums and cheered on his anthems were blissfully unaware that they may as well have been nuns at a Madonna concert, delighted to see so many crucifixes on stage.

The contradiction was certainly not lost on Springsteen, who had to be convinced to use Leibowitz’s photo for the cover. Ultimately he did and the image was also incorporated in the video for the title track.

Born in the USA is one of the most imitated covers of all time. (The following examples were all found on music site AMiRIGHT)

The 2 Live Crew – As Nasty As They Wanna Be (1989)

Rarely was an album so aptly named, or a band so enamored by the backside. This cover is not what you’d describe as a design masterpiece, nor is the photograph anything less than ridiculous. And funnily enough, the bling and bum combo on the cover is the chastest thing about As Nasty As They Wanna Be, which was declared by more than one local court to be “obscene and illegal to sell”.

While their LA contemporaries were terrifying the moral majority with gangster rap, the Miami-based 2 Live Crew achieved it with pure filth. The single “Me So Horny” features a raft of romantic lyrics sure to melt the heart of any young lady:

“I won’t tell your mama if you don’t tell your dad
I know he’ll be disgusted when he sees your pussy busted
Wont your mama be so mad if she knew I got that ass?
I’m a freak in heat, a dog without warning
My appetite is sex, cause me so horny”

In a later verse, Fresh kid ice adds:

“You said it yourself, you like it like I do
Put your lips on my dick, and suck my asshole too”

The band also released a PG-version, As Clean As They Wanna Be, which came with the cute disclaimer “This album does not contain explicit lyrics.”

While the controversy surrounding As Nasty As They Wanna Be contributed to sales of over 2 million units, As Clean As They Wanna Be stayed on the shelves.

With battles over both censorship and copyright issues, The 2 Live Crew is one of the few bands to have their case taken to the Supreme Court.

Echoing their enthusiasm for both pop-culture references and female buttocks, the next release was a cheeky tribute to Born in the USA.

Loverboy – Get Lucky (1981)

Loverboy spent the eighties creating anthems that make you feel like you’re flying down a freeway.  Even the titles of Get Lucky’s hit singles scream epic good times: Working for the Weekend, Lucky Ones, Gangs in the Street and Take Me to the Top.

Get Lucky’s cover, featuring a confusing image from photographer David Kennedy, is striking in its simplicity. There’s something genuinely charming about the crossed fingers, which perfectly bring to life the hopeful optimism of the album’s title.

According to Wikipedia, the famous derriere belongs to the photographer’s daughter Tymara Christen Kennedy, which is not at all creepy.

Various Artists – Ripper ‘76 (1976)

I know very little about this hits compilation, except for the fact that its cover is amazing. It also must have shifted a few copies, as the motif was repeated the following year.

Eagles of Death Metal: Death by Sexy (2006)

They got their name when frontman Jess Hughes heard bandmate Josh Homme describe death metal group Vadar as “The Eagles of death metal”. The striking turn of phrase inspired Hughes to consider what that mix would actually sound like.

This enthusiasm for pastiche continues on the cover of Death by Sexy, the band’s second album. Recognisable influences for this anal bum cover include the Stone’s Sticky Fingers, Too Fast for Love by Motley Crue, Get Lucky and Born in the USA.

In many ways, it’s a perfect companion piece to the cover by The Donnas.

The Donnas – Bitchin’ (2007)

Read a previous Sleevage entry about this cover here

Sigur Rós – Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust (2008)

The latest album from everyone’s favourite Icelandic post-rock band features a photograph by contemporary artist Ryan McGinley. It’s taken from a 2008 series of his called I Know Where the Summer Goes (the title of which was taken from an early B-side by Belle & Sebastian).

McGinley’s primary artistic focus is youth and for this series he traveled America with a troupe of models. He photographed them sometimes clothed and sometimes naked, frolicking across vast, sunlit landscapes. The cover image evokes a feeling of freedom and joy, which is perhaps why the band chose it for an album titled (in English) “With A Buzz in Our Ears We Play Endlessly”.

Strokes: Is This It (2001)

Yes, this is it. This is the sexiest Anal Bum cover in the history of mankind. The Stroke’s debut was that rare beast – an album that exceeded its considerable hype musically and then matched its sonic genius with an iconic cover.

The image was the result of an impromptu photo shoot by photographer Colin Lane. His girlfriend at the time possessed the fetching figure you see on the cover. As she tells it: “I walked out of the shower and I was completely naked,” she recalls. “I was walking around the house – he was like, put this glove on. I walked over, boom, that was the shot.”

Lane told NME that “a stylist left the glove in my apartment. I begged my girlfriend at the time to do it. We did about 10 shots. There was no real inspiration, I was just trying to take a sexy picture.”

He succeeded and, he says, his “ex-girlfriend was thrilled – she was a very rock ‘n’ roll girl so it’s a big feather in her cap to have her ass on The Strokes’ cover.”

She tells the story herself in this video, originally posted by Goldenfiddle.

Is This It from Goldenfiddle on Vimeo.

Call out: If you know of any Anal Bum Covers we’ve missed out on, please let us know. It’s important this list grows.

Not a fan of the rear? Check out the flipside here

A paranormally gifted woman stands in front of a barren, twisted and wintry landscape, her face expressionless and intentions unclear. The mysterious cover of Fever Ray’s self-titled debut album invokes a pitch-black, pagan sensibility.

For its designer Martin Ander, the job came at a perfect time. “I had just started to draw by hand again after years of computer dependence when Karin asked me to do the album art for her solo project Fever Ray” he explains. “That was just what I needed to get me started with ink and paper again.”

Fever Ray is the alter-ego of Swedish musician Karen Dreijer Andersson, who is better known as half of brother-sister duo The Knife. When she briefed designer Ander on the cover art, she “gave me a mind map containing old photographs of seanses, haunted houses and people covered with ectoplasm” he recalls, with the instruction that “this is the emotion I want to project”.

Drawing holds a special significance for Ander, the son of the famous Swedish illustrator and political cartoonist Jan-Erik Ander. “I kind of grew up with it”, he says.

But while his father carries on the tradition of political satire, Ander took his approach and inspiration from a more contemporary genre.

“I want people to try to understand and look for clues. That’s something I got from being a longtime fan of skateboard art, where the graphic on the board plays a big part in building the myth behind the rider or company, or in this case Fever Ray.”

It’s an interesting observation on the parallels between cover art and skateboard art. And while the ghost of Charles Burns’ work can be made out in the high-contrast and macabre aesthetic, Anders names influences closer to home. “I’m a big fan of Swedish horror artist Hans Arnold, who is mostly famous for an ABBA album cover and his book illustrations.”

His original brief for Fever Ray included an album cover, some merchandise and two 12” singles, however this body of work has already expanded. “I wanted the images to link together, like a story. The motifs are mostly a result of coincidence, but there is a cohesion. All the images refer to each other, the lyrics, videos and Fever Rays private self. I like the idea that the cover is more than just an image.”

The approach is at the same time vivid and ambiguous, a tension that’s consistent with Fever Ray’s music. She builds creepy soundscapes that are the perfect haunted house for her modulated, androgynised vocals and oblique lyrics.

“I prefer lyrics that are like that”, she said in one interview, “I like to keep it as minimal as possible… It’s very important to keep the magic and the feeling of something you can draw yourself. You don’t want to be too literal.”

As representatives of the almost-supernatural wave of creative talent coming out of Sweden at the moment, Ander and Fever Ray remind us what dark arts both music and design can be.

Note: This article appeared first in Monster Children Magazine

From now on, every issue we’ll be contributing a new article for the “Behind The Cover” section. It’s an excellent publication, so be sure to pick a copy.

Now updated.

This striking cover from hip-hop maestro Jay-Z immediately caught our eye and we featured it yesterday. However our readers were quick to point out that we’d only scratched the surface in our review. So thanks to our learned, intrepid and (let’s face it) sexy readers, here’s an updated feature.

This month sees the release of The Blueprint 3 by Jay-Z . The legendary rapper is in top form, with the usual emphasis on slick production and collaborations with big names that include Kanye West, Timbaland, The Neptunes and Rihanna. In many ways, it’s business as usual for this consummate businessman – with the exception of the cover art.

It’s not a new thing to bemoan the paucity of quality hip-hop sleeves, which is what makes The Blueprint 3 so refreshing. Check out the behind the scenes video to appreciate the craft that has gone into making it.

Many have noted a passing resemblance to the muted cover of U2’s No Line on the Horizon.

While others point to Now Here is Nowhere by The Secret Machines.

Or Kingdom of Comfort by Christian rockers Delirious?.

But the album’s aesthetic and concept owes its biggest debt to the previous work of photographer Dan Tobin Smith. The assorted of junk is also reminiscent of his work for Athlete’s Tourist album.

Tobin Smith worked with art director Greg Burke and set designer Nicola Yeoman to create the mod, minimalist cover art for Jay-Z. With its gathered assortments of white instruments and electronic equipment, it makes me feel like I’ve stepped back into some avant-garde gallery in the 70’s.

And in a way, it turns out that’s the decade where Jay-Z wanted to take us.

Referring to the gathered instruments he says: “These things are like the forgotten pieces in hip-hop. It’s still about music. It’s not about radio, making gimmicks — it’s still about making music. Those things are piled in the corner. These are the forgotten things about music. It’s still about music. It’s not about radio, it’s not about making gimmicks, it’s about music.”

The three red stripes are also a symbolic call for a return to simpler times.

“The three stripes that everybody is asking about is made from the original [number] three. The first three they made on the wall was someone carving. If you look at [the number] 3, all they did was connect lines. The whole thing about this album, how I approached it, is that I wanted to make a new classic to start that all over again — to go back to making classic albums like the ones we grew up listening to.”

At this stage of his career, it’s a worthy goal to set out to make a classic. It’s also admirable that he would put so much thought and effort into a concept cover. After all, the sentiment that hip-hop needs to return to the ethos and integrity of a bygone era is nothing new – it’s just surprising to see it expressed in such a lateral and subtle way.

Update: there is a great interview with Dan Tobin on Itsnicethat.com who goes into great details about the cover and the process.

Here’s a quick excerpt.

This is one of the most anticipated albums of the year, and the first album Jay Z hasn’t appeared on the cover, how did you get involved in the project and what was the reasoning behind a much more sculptural approach?

Greg Burke, the creative director on the project at Atlantic records had seen the Letter ‘E’ I had shot with the set designer Nicola Yeoman and I guess he had it in the back of his mind when he was thinking of ideas for Jay Z’s new artwork for Blueprint 3. I think Greg and Jay Z had lots of ideas about what the album meant and it seemed to be about taking it back to the source, in terms of the music itself and then subsequently the artwork. For the album and the idea was it was very much about the music and all the things that make music. The 3 is represented by 3 bars which is of course the old way of writing ‘3’ so that seemed to work really nicely with the idea behind the album and the set design that evolved. We all liked the idea that the installation was almost machine like, like all these things were interlinked. That’s why everything is packed and jumbled together. Like it had kind of grown out of this corner.

I think it was a brave approach for Jay Z as all his previous albums have had him on them. I love still life, and the way I shoot is quite old school. It took 3 days to shoot, was all shot on 10×8 inch film, so the quality in the whites is fantastic, so much subtle tone. We worked long and hard on the colour work on the post and even in a single page mag advert I can see that effort. You could blow the image up to the size of a building and it would still hold up. It seems the album is about that old school crafted production so its nice that that same method went into the shoot.

Here is the letter E piece Dan refers to

I’ll leave it to the designers to argue over the merits of including the artist name, website and album title on the cover. This could simply be a clear case of Jay-Z the artist making one compromise with his old friend Jay-Z the businessman.

Note: This is the first album cover to not feature Jay-Z. Lucky as it would have been hard to quick change into this one.

And for those interested Alex Goose has released for free “The Blueprint 3 Outtakes” album with tracks that didn’t make the initial cut.

Yes, it’s a jpeg successfully masquerading as a gif.

Merriweather Post Pavilion is the 8th studio album by Animal Collective and is already being acclaimed as one of the best albums of the year.

The much-anticipated and now celebrated album boast trippy cover art inspired by the work of Japanese psychologist Akiyoshi Kitaoka.

Kitaoke started working on rats and then monkeys to earn his PHD in animal psychology, before moving on in the nineties to study “visual perception and visual illusions of geometrical shape, brightness, color, in motion illusions and other visual phenomena like Gestalt completion and perceptual transparency, based on a modern conception of Gestalt Psychology.”

As a result, he’s created heaps of incredible visual illusions.

Writing in Pop Dose, Taylor Long observes that the “optical illusion cover for Animal Collective’s latest and eighth release, Merriweather Post Pavilion, is more than something fun to look at while under the influence of the sort of drugs you might like to be on while listening to it. Curves of bright green ovals on a purple background, they appear to be in motion when we know they’re stationary. It’s an apt representation of the album’s dueling thematic components: fantasy versus reality, whimsy vs obligation, restlessness versus tranquility.”

Or as a fan succinctly puts it on the Something Awful forums: “I dunno, that album cover looks pretty much how Animal Collective sounds”.

For me it evokes other associations. Do you remember those awful magic eye pictures that ruled the world for a few months in the early 90’s? Basically they were just a messy, indistinguishable shape but if you looked at them in a certain way and concentrated, a 3D shape would pop out.

I was in primary school when they became popular and I had real trouble seeing the hidden image. Other people would take one glance and then be all like: “Oh yeah, it’s a plane.” Meanwhile I squinted, held them close to my eyes and then pulled them away slowly; tried crossing my eyes and uncrossing them. After a protracted period I might finally make out the hidden image but not before suffering derision for my evident lack of insight.

I imagine for many that it’s like this with indie music. A bunch of cool kids hear an unusual band and get busy loving them, while a clueless and somewhat frustrated majority try to make out what’s so special.