Monday, 21 December 2009

Some of the most famous album covers!

Nirvana : Nevermind




Nevermind is the second studio album by the American rock band Nirvana, released on September 24, 1991. Produced by Butch Vig, Nevermind was the group's first release on DGC Records. Frontman Kurt Cobain sought to make music outside of the restrictive confines of the Seattle grunge scene, drawing influence from groups such as the Pixies and their use of loud/quiet song dynamics.

The Nevermind album cover shows a baby swimming toward a US dollar bill on a fishhook. According to Cobain, he conceived the idea while watching a television program on water births with Grohl. Cobain mentioned it to Geffen's art director Robert Fisher. Fisher found some stock footage of underwater births but they were too graphic for the record company. Also, the stock house that controlled the photo of a swimming baby that they subsequently settled on wanted $7,500 a year for its use, so instead Fisher sent a photographer to a pool for babies to take pictures. Five shots resulted and the band settled on the image of a three-month-old infant named Spencer Elden. There was controversy about having a naked baby featuring on the album cover therefore Geffen found an alternative to have a sticker covering the baby's genitals.



Pink Floyd : Dark Side of the Moon




The album was originally released in a gatefold LP sleeve designed by Hipgnosis and George Hardie, and bore Hardie's iconic dispersive prism on the cover. For The Dark Side of the Moon Richard Wright instructed them to come up with something "smarter, neater—more classy". The prism design was inspired by a photograph that Thorgerson had seen during a brainstorming session with Powell. The artwork was created by their associate, George Hardie. Hipgnosis offered the band a choice of seven designs, but all four members agreed that the prism was by far the best. The design represents three elements; the band's stage lighting, the album lyrics, and Richard Wright's request for a "simple and bold" design. Added shortly afterwards, the gatefold design also includes a visual representation of the heartbeat sound used throughout the album, and the back of the album cover contains Thorgerson's suggestion of another prism recombining the spectrum of light, facilitating interesting layouts of the sleeve in record shops. The light band shining out from the prism on the album cover has six colours, missing indigo compared to the traditional division of the spectrum into red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. A normal prism would also exhibit a continuous spectrum with no defined boundaries between colours, and coloured light within the prism. Inside the sleeve were two posters and a sheet of pyramid-themed stickers.


Herb Alpert : Whipped Cream and Other Delights





Whipped Cream sold over 6 million copies in the United States and the album cover alone is considered a classic pop culture icon. It featured model Dolores Erickson wearing chiffon and shaving cream. The picture was taken at a time when Erickson was three months pregnant. The cover was so popular with Alpert fans that, during concerts, when about to play the song "Whipped Cream", Alpert would tell the audience, "Sorry, we can't play the cover for you!" The art was parodied by several groups including once A&M band Soul Asylum, who made fun of the liner notes along with the back cover on their album Clam Dip & Other Delights, comedian Pat Cooper on his album Spaghetti Sauce and Other Delights.

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