‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’ a wise phrase until it actually comes to book shopping, how else do I know which one to pick up from the endless stacked shelves? We can’t help but be drawn to books with the more intriguing cover art, picking up ones that stand out and appeal to us as individuals. Can the same be said for albums?
I don’t think so – at least not in the digitised world of music we have today. Albums are no longer tactile things we can pick up from a shelf, there is no browse option on Spotify. Imagine trawling through a sea of unfamiliar album covers on your laptop trying to find something new to listen to. Actually, now I’ve written that down it sounds like a fun idea. The point is that cover art has become a secondary feature, the sidenote to the main piece of art being the album. I know what album I want to listen to, and the album cover popping up on my phone screen as I play it, is something I’m indifferent to. Although I like to imagine the person I’m sat next to on the bus is highly impressed with my music taste, looking at the album cover isn’t actually what I care about. It just happens to be a part of the experience. This has changed over time since once I would have owned the image myself as a physical record cover. But this being said, it would be pretty depressing to get rid of cover art altogether. Just because our relationship with it has changed it doesn’t mean the value in cover art has necessarily lessened. People are still drawn to album covers, they can form iconic imagery and are also are good excuse to bring more art into the world.
When I first sat down to think about what I might write about for this article The Velvet Underground’s 1967 self-titled album jumped to mind. The iconic image of Andy Warhol’s banana is almost separate in its identity as a key pop art image. I kind of assumed that it had already existed around the time the band were recording and that they’d nicked it. In fact, it was made for the album specifically, begging the question of whether it exists as a work of art in itself. Ultimately it was made in the name of another piece of art. The destiny of Warhol’s banana was already decided before it had made its first print, since the whole point of it was to document another piece of art. Does this diminish its importance? Arguably the two aren’t separate, the music and the cover are one and the same, coming together in order to form a singular artwork. Certainly in the case of The Velvet underground and Andy Warhol’s banana the two seem inextricably linked. Warhol manged the band at the time, building their image through his artwork. This meant that while the existence of the banana is dependent on the music, the music too needed to Warhol’s art to stand up. The relationship went both ways. Indeed, art and music often go hand in hand, two different ways of articulating one message or idea they can be seen as simply two different mediums.
This reminded me of another iconic album cover. The Sex Pistols ‘God Save the Queen’. Like the Velvet Underground this band was caught up in an art movement that was wider than just music. The Sex Pistols themselves are a key symbol of the punk scene, and an example of how the relationship between art and music can go both ways. Here, the music was arguably made as a means to document a fashion scene. The band were managed by Malcom McLaren, who ran the shop Sex alongside Vivienne Westwood, dressing the band. The defaced image of the Queen was made by an art school friend of McClaren’s specifically for the album. The torn-up collage feel had political appeal in its links to dadaism as a kind of photomontage and the explicit punk attitude that comes with ripping something up. Here the music is not just a sound but an image. One carefully cultivated in all aspects – fashion, art, music, performance which come together to become one final finished piece of art.
I haven’t even had time to cover when an album uses art that already existed. In this case it could be argued that the musician is inspired and drawn in by the artist. In any case there is no original artwork, everything is a creative evolution of the inspiration that came before it. Trying to separate the album cover from the music is impossible, and looking at the two as one synthesis of an artistic message makes it all the more enriching as an experience. Whether Warhol’s banana was conceived as a means to another end doesn’t matter. If I showed someone living under a rock with awful music taste the image they could still love it as a piece of art. It just so happens it is made all the better when you’re looking at it while listening to the album it was made for.
“the velvet underground & nico 1967” by oddsock is licensed under CC BY 2.0.