Special #1: Mike's Album Covers

When London Calling decided to make their cover a replica of the iconic Elvis Presley debut album, they ended up creating an album cover just as iconic of their own. Hell, it even got it’s own postage stamp. So, in a special piece to honor today’s album’s special achievement, Nick and I are selecting our 20 favorite album covers. Here are mine, in alphabetical order:

Appetite For Destruction by Guns N’ Roses

This list is in alphabetical order, but without a doubt, Appetite For Destruction is the album cover that has struck me the most, and I’m convinced is the finest cover to date. It sticks with you, the use of negative space, the vibrant colors, the stark crucifix imagery, all of it. This is how you do an album cover right. And to think, this was the second cover they tried.

Another Love Song by The Frames

While not one of my favorite Frames albums, it is my favorite album of theirs to look at. It reminds me of a Rene Magritte, and really says something about Hansard’s view of love. It looks so alluring and appetizing, even when the things that can hurt you are right there to be seen.

Big Whiskey & The Groogrux King by Dave Matthews Band

Sometimes when I buy a record both on vinyl and CD, I do so because I love the album art so much I want it in a larger form. Such is the case with Big Whiskey (though it does sound better on record). If LeRoi Moore, their band mate who died before the album’s release and to whom the album was dedicated, had wished to have his life celebrated rather than mourned, than he got his wish. This cover is truly a celebration.

Disreali Gears by Cream

If you look too long at this cover, you may actually get a seizure like those kids who watch the Polygon episode of Pokemon. Truly the essence of 60’s psychedelic captured in a cover, this vibrant, lively surrealists-wet-dream is exactly the kind of head-trip listeners got from Cream’s masterpiece.

Double Fantasy by John Lennon & Yoko Ono

There is a special place in my heart for this album, John Lennon’s unplanned goodbye to this mortal coil. Capturing a tender moment between John and the love of his life, Yoko Ono, there’s so much simplistic beauty in this image that one cannot help but feel the genuine love. The names appearing over each others heads just goes further to prove that they were not two separate people, but two parts of one whole. There is not a more touching image in this world, to me.

Fortress by Protest The Hero

Anyone who’s read my pieces knows I’m not into this metal scene, but my bassist James, who is, turned me on to these guys. I find them pretty damn enjoyable, when the singer’s not being the growling toolbag every metal singer tried to be for some inexplicable reason. The guy’s got good pipes on him. But this cover, regardless of the music, is fascinating. It’s 21st century surrealism, and it’s dark psychedelic is like the most beautiful bad-trip I ever took.

Histoire de Melody Nelson by Serge Gainsbourg

Instantly, just through his cover, Gainsbourg draws you into his masterpiece. There a topless young girl stands, covering herself with a teddy bear, staring out at you, either terrified or enticing, all depending on your mindset. Whether you think the album is about a horrible act of child molestation or a poor, simple Humbert-like anti-hero driven to his doom, this cover can prove your point. And…she’s probably not 18 there…so I’m just gonna end my commentary there.

Horses by Patti Smith

I make no effort to hide my love of Patti Smith, and her visual “Fuck you” to the music industry’s objectification of women on her debut album is as brilliant as any lyrics she’s ever penned. Lookin like Annie Hall after a bad night of drinking, Patti says plainly “This is who I am. I am neither woman nor man, but artist. Take I as you will.” That kind of courage is seriously lacking in today’s world.

Illmatic by Nas

Remember back when Nas wasn’t trying to be cool by naming an album “Nigger” and was just considered great because of his art? Yeah, it was a while ago, but there was a time, and this cover proves that. A picture is worth a thousand words, and 1,000 lyrics about “growing up on the streets” can’t convey the same emotion as this cover, as the busy life of the city takes place before and within the eyes of this child.

In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning by Frank Sinatra

No album cover better captures the theme of an album. We’ve all felt that feeling (and if not, congratulations and I‘m sorry) of the dew sticking to your face at 5 am when you leave her place and wonder if she’s thinking of you. Frank decided to show us he knew exactly what we were feeling, and even today, as you lean against a wall like Frank in the wee small hours, that is the time you miss her most of all.

Life After Death by The Notorious B.I.G.

I’m not a huge fan of Mr. Biggie Smalls, and think the word “over-rated” was invented solely for him, but let’s set that aside. This cover is so bleak, so jarring, and so heart wrenching when you realize he died before ever seeing this album be released. I hate when people call any artwork “prophetic”, so I won’t be a hypocrite, but one can’t help but incline their thought that way. That aside, the dark tone, the horrific matter-of-fact look on Chris Wallace’s face, that slight terror at the idea of death with a full acceptance of its inevitability, this cover is more a statement on mortality than a gangsta life promo.

Live At Sin-e by Jeff Buckley

While Grace is a gorgeous cover in its own right, Live at Sin-e, from what I can gather, is the truest representation of Jeff’s life. Standing there emotionally naked in the small, shabby set-up of NYC’s Sin-e club, howling his heart out while patrons basically ignore him. That’s how Jeff wanted it. Not to be worshipped, but to have to earn the focus of the audience. Even the coffee ring stain that adorns the cover sums up what is said to be the emotion of those magical Sin-e gigs. Everyone going about their life, and Jeff just being a decoration in the room.

Pink Moon by Nick Drake

After two albums of very stark self-portraits, Drake’s Pink Moon reveals a gorgeous painting that both means nothing and summarizes the entire feel of the album. It is a portrait of the unwordable definition of mesmerizing beautiful melancholy. While other albums bear his actual image, it is the sad clown face on Pink Moon that I always first mentally place to the name Nick Drake.

Relapse by Eminem

Normally Mr. Mathers’ album covers never strike me as anything special, but his newest release (as of typing this) Relapse proved to be his most potent cover yet. An album meant to describe his battle with addiction, Eminem wears a very somber yet unsympathetic face, the image of which is formed by a mass assemblage of pills. By showing his entire make-up to be pills, he expresses his acceptance that these drugs have overtaken his life, and for anyone who’s ever been drowning in a prescription sea, it’s a haunting reminder of your own dark days.

Tattoo You by The Rolling Stones

One of the Stones most iconic images by far, it’s hard to even describe the allure of this cover. It’s just so…enthralling. So strikingly artistic. Without the clutter and chaos of something Like Sgt. Pepper’s, The Rolling Stones were album to present a majestic cover for an album that some believe is their finest. And, I gotta be honest, the Rock-A-Bye Baby take on this album cover is just fucking adorable:

Send Away The Tigers by Manic Street Preachers

Never have both good and evil been so…well…sexy. The ragged imagery of the cover of Send Away The Tigers is something I enjoy a great deal more than the actual album (not one of their better ones, with the exception of “Underdogs”). I’ll be honest, I’m in love with this image, and for the record, would perform horrific acts if it meant a date with either of these two women. The cover comes from a book called Monika Monster Future First Woman On Mars by Valerie Phillips, so, fantastic work, Miss Phillips.

Spring Awakening Soundtrack

I was a fan of the Wedekind play when this show first came out, so I was hesitant to embrace it, but the music spoke to an adolescent still restless in the back of my reasonably matured mind that hungered for that exhilaration of un-commonplace sex, and this straightforward cover captures that feeling completely, at once hiding the face to remind us of those nights sneaking in strokes and sucks while her parents were downstairs, and focusing solely on where the true focus of sex in it’s most emotionless is based.

The Stranger by Billy Joel

While many music lovers see Nevermind by Nirvana as the finest statement on life in the modern world to ever grace an album cover, I prefer the understated commentary of Billy Joel’s The Stranger. Albeit, I’m a Long Island boy, and am thereby genetically engineered to like Billy Joel. Here Joel lay, having hung up his gloves, given up the fight, and is studying his own mask, lamenting that he has to wear a different face to the world than the one he truly has. If you feel you don’t have a mask, you just haven’t looked it in the eyes yet.

Two Suns by Bat For Lashes

What in the fuck is going on in this album cover? I wondered that when I first got turned on to Bat For Lashes. But as I soon discovered, not only is the album phenomenal, but the cover is so captivating, so dark and mysterious, that it only helps with the mind-blowing meditation that’s bound to occur if you have any taste at all and listen to Two Suns.

Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division

One of the most enigmatic album covers in the history of rock music, Unknown Pleasures is so minimalist, so dark, so stark, than one cannot help but be intrigued. It one-upped Dark Side Of The Moon. I’m still not sure what those tiny white lines are, but god damn if their not fascinating.