Album Covers: Turning Vinyl Sleeves into Canvas

By Jesse Anderson

In 1938, Columbia Records hired American graphic designer Alex Steinweiss to develop cover art for a selection of classical music albums. This move would irrevocably change the relationship between art and music.

Cover art for vinyl, which in the pre-war era was sold in paper slips or cardboard, hugely impacted record sales, establishing a tradition of album artwork which allowed artists to brand themselves with more than sound alone. Over the past eighty-five years, album art has not only provided artists such as Andy Warhol with commissioned work but has also established a collaborative space which artists and musicians can share.

Andy Warhol’s album art for The Velvet Underground and Nico is an iconic pillar of Pop-Art, exemplary of the way in which music and art came to be inextricably intertwined in the mid-twentieth century. Album art became a facet of music production which would survive the streaming revolution of the twenty-first century: a phenomenon which threatened to render vinyl and CDs obsolete. Artistic vinyl covers presented music-lovers with the opportunity to own art at affordable prices: record shops turned into art galleries of a new kind, where you could buy the art, take it home and display it. This was especially suited to movements such as Pop-Art, which were heavily concerned with consumerism and mass production. However, Warhol’s earlier work on albums for artists such as Count Basie provides a record of a pre-Pop-Art Warhol, interested in personality, expression, and individuality. Warhol’s portrait of Count Basie (which constitutes the album cover for Count Basie, 1955), shows us a side of his artistry which is less obvious in the Pop-Art for which he is better known.

The portrait is ink-based and purely tonal, with the only colour being in the simple typography which Count Basie appears to be looking at. This cover is thought to be among the first of the celebrity portraits by Warhol and offers a tender glimpse of the artist in his early years.

After the Second World War, art directors for album art became less concerned with using cover art to sell records, and more interested in the genre itself. According to Colby Mugrabi, ‘it became fashionable for musicians of the 1960’s to invite old art school friends to design their cover art’, and this is exactly what happened with Radiohead in the 90’s

Stanley Donwood met Thom Yorke during their time studying art in Exeter University. Donwood is the man who has been working alongside Radiohead since 1995, collaborating with the band to create a visual representation of their music. When Radiohead signed with their first record company, Yorke disliked the manufactured nature of the graphic design aspects of record production, choosing instead to call up Donwood to ask whether he’d like a go at designing a record sleeve for Radiohead’s album, The Bends. “That was it, really” explains Thom Yorke. The pair have worked together ever since. Donwood was drawn to the democratic environment of the record shop which negated hierarchical artistic constrictions present in traditional art galleries. For the album cover of The Bends, Donwood used a CPR model as the central figure, recording it with a cassette camcorder.

The grainy, uncanny image, the mannequin’s head captured in a state of what could be either pleasure or despair, reflected the bands acoustic rage at the modern, superficial world. Donwood describes the way in which his album art for the band would be heavily influenced by the sound of the music, as he would begin each project around the time recording started and aim to finish as recording came to a close. The emancipation from traditional structures of commercial art allowed Donwood and Yorke to create based on the changing dynamic of the music and the emotion of their personal lives. While the album art was hugely significant to the visual presentation of Radiohead, the music - the sound - came first. The reception of Radiohead’s albums would be based on the sound of the music, not judged by the perceived merits of the artwork. Album art gave artists a chance to create with a secured platform for display, without the pressure of critique which followed gallery placements.

***Michael Trevithick, Pink Moon, 1972***

At the same time, however, artists recognised that the artwork on their album covers, at least in the pre-streaming age, had to sell in record shops and therefore should maintain a degree of visual attraction. This was a consideration for Nick Drake, whose album cover for Pink Moon would come to appease lovers of Dali-esque surrealism. Initially, English rock-photographer Keith Morris commissioned to take a photograph of Drake on Hampstead Heath, which would constitute the sleeve design, possibly inspired by the Grammy winning photographic album cover for Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits by Milton Glaser. Alas, Drake’s appearance, ravaged by self-medication and depression, was decided to be too unappealing for the consumer market. Drake’s sister then connected the label with her friend Michael Trevithick, a surrealist artist who was then asked to design the album cover. Following Drake’s ambiguous brief, all Trevithick had to do was include a pink moon. Trevithick found great creative freedom, albeit as the result of Drake’s taciturn state.

Trevithick’s surrealist piece reflects Drake’s musical innovation and his isolation from musical trends of Britain in the 1970’s in its strange loneliness. The vaguely unsettling cover imbues a sense of premonition, an anticipation which feels desolately fulfilled by Drake’s untimely death two years after the album’s release. The epitaph ‘Now we rise/ And we are everywhere’ is taken from the last song on Pink Moon, Drake’s last album.

Album art is a genre which embodies the democratization of art, providing the everyday consumer with the opportunity to buy art, even if it happens to be on a printed sleeve rather than an oil-caressed canvas. In the age of streaming services, album art remains a genre which is saturated with creativity. From the striking photographic portraits of Little Simz albums, to the intricate, living illustrations which make up the album art of King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizards, album art has thrived amidst the streaming overhaul. Artists remain interested in their visual reception, their brand. Some artists, such as Have A Nice Life, utilise more traditional art in that visual reception. On the album cover of death consciousness, art-lovers will be thrilled to see David’s The Death of Marat.

Album art reflects the wonderfully human desire for artistry, for expression and exploration. In a way which is at risk of being taken for granted, album art is a beautifully simple way in which artwork is built into our everyday lives.

Notes:

Colby Mugrabi, “The Art of Album Covers”, MinnieMuse, last modified, June 10, 2020, https://www.minniemuse.com/articles/art-of/album-covers/#:~:text=The%20earliest%20work%20of%20album,covers%20that%20we%20know%20today.

Lucy Jones, “Stanley Donwood on the Stories Behind his Radiohead Album Covers”, NME, last modified, September 27, 2013, https://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/stanley-donwood-on-the-stories-behind-his-radiohead-album-covers-766325

Anton Spice, “Cover Versions: 25 Of The Best Andy Warhol Record Sleeves”, The Vinyl Factory, last modified June 17, 2014 https://thevinylfactory.com/features/cover-versions-25-of-the-best-andy-warhol-record-sleeves/