What else could explain the sheer half-arsedness of these album covers, from Sugababes and Girls Aloud respectively?
Presumably the record industry has thought “hmmm, everybody downloads or rips now, so covers don’t matter. Let’s sack all the designers!”
Future pop album covers won’t have images at all. They’ll just say “Fuck you, Steve Jobs” in brightly coloured letters.
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The Telegraph also blogged about album covers today.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/lucy_jones/blog/2008/10/21/can_you_judge_an_album_by_its_cover
Some days I feel like the only person in the world who still traipses out to buy cds. I still love having the product in my hand and still love looking through the book as I listen to the music. It’s a dying pleasure, if you ask me.
The Kings of Leon cover that the Telegraph points to is different to mine too, which is this one: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/34/OBTNUS.jpg
Oh and, that’s a shocking photo of Heidi Sugababe on that cover. She’s way better looking than that!
Hellish, isn’t it? I suspect the shot was chosen because of Keisha’s breasts, because Amelle and Heidi just look weird. It’s an awful, awful cover. The only thing they haven’t done wrong is use Comic Sans for the typeface.
FWIW – and it pains me to say this – the album isn’t great either. Don’t get me wrong, it’s precision-tooled pop music, which is never a bad thing, but by Sugababes standards it’s lacking. The stand-out track for me so far is Side Chick, which was written with Robyn’s producer, and while it’s a great song it’s a great *Robyn* song. I spend the whole time thinking how much better it’d be with Robyn singing it. There’s a kinda steely vulnerability her voice has that Keisha (who sings it) doesn’t – if you compare Robyn’s Handle Me with Side Chick you’ll know what I mean by the end of the first line. And another song has a Jacksons steal that’s just a little too blatant, so you spend the whole time thinking about “Want you back” instead of the song you’re listening to.
Still, baby bigmouth loves the whole album. I’ve never seen her dance quite so madly :)
Oh, and that worst album covers link (from the telegraph thing) is wrong on at least one count: the village people one is genius. Totally nails the era :) My money’s on Millie Jackson having the world’s worst, though.
Sorry, back again – the Kings Of Leon one seems to be the UK cover; it’s certainly the one on the shelves over here. I prefer the one you’ve linked to though.
Funny, because I preferred the UK one. Still, Mr Mac and I do tend to ardue about who gets the Kings of Leon cds in the event of (admittedly at this time, unlikely) marital separation so maybe we should invest in a UK cover collection.
Perhaps this Sugababes album is one I can wait for to hit the bargain bins then. Although if Baby Bigmouth liked it…. (many happy returns to her, by the way!)
Now I think of, it, someone at Sugababes HQ has it in for Heidi, I am sure. A friend of mine has these photos of Sugababes http://www.flickr.com/photos/cheezus69/2371315159/in/set-72157604304327943/ on his Flickr. Those opaque tights they’ve dressed her in do her no favours at all.
Robyn was the support act to Madonna in Zürich. I didn’t really think she was up to much until she sang some sort of remix version of Salt ‘n’ Pepa’s Push It. I much preferred Bob Sinclair at Madonna in Stade de France. Yes, I am just boasting now.
Never mind the tights – somebody’s making them wear cake decorations! http://www.flickr.com/photos/cheezus69/2371317235/in/set-72157604304327943/
Robyn’s last album is brilliant. Not sure I’d want to see her live though…
One of the main reasons I still buy CDs is because they look great sitting there on top of the hi-fi player. If they start producing crappy covers, then the word “Album Art” would soon be gone -(