The artwork of an album cover is crucial.
While it’s important for music to have its own feeling, I love how artists can immerse you into the world of an album before you even start listening to it with its cover.
Unlike movie, book and video game covers that are important for marketing, once you get into them, the content stands on its own.
For example, the box art for a game won’t affect the gameplay experience.
Yet for albums, the cover of an album can make the listening experience feel better. It’s a partnership that goes hand in hand to create the perfect audio visual journey.
Album artwork can enhance your listening experience.
A lot of the time, bad album artwork can discourage me from listening to the album even if the music is good.
This happened to me when Kanye West released his recent album, DONDA.
Ahead of West’s anticipated album release, a handful of potential covers were shared ranging from an adapted painting by Louise Bourgeois, to Ye’s new sculpture—The Incomplete Truth by Damien Hirst.
The final result, however, ended up being a plain black square.
Then we have Drake with his highly anticipated latest album, Certified Lover Boy.
The cover features multiple colorways of the pregnant woman emoji.
While both album covers took fans by surprise and the Internet by storm, one thing is for sure, they both were lazy and random.
When an artist releases an album with a great or bad cover, it’s forever going to be associated with the work they produce for that album.
True iconic album covers don’t just define an album, they define an era, a generation and, in some cases, an entire musical genre.
You have probably heard of album covers like Nirvana’s 1991 Nevermind, Pink Floyd’s 1973 The Dark Side Of The Moon or Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 Rumours, even if you’ve never listened to the music on the album.
All in all, the art of audio is the sound of the soul, but album covers can help us identify the images that go along with the feelings that the music evokes.
