When it comes to music, the sound itself is pure art and the cover from its album can also be the sole reason for artistic freedom. Through album cover art, musicians get the chance to distill the ethos and sonics of their music into a physical representation.
Here are 7 of the best ones that’ll bring you nostalgia:
The New Abnormal by The Strokes (Jean-Michel Basquiat)
In 2020, post-punk rock band The Strokes released their sixth studio album, named The New Abnormal. They chose the 1981 painting Bird on Money by fellow New Yorker, famed graffiti artist, and neoexpressionist Jean-Michel Basquiat for the Grammy-nominated record’s cover. The front man, Julian Casablancas, said in an interview that the album’s title refers to a “kind of threat to your reality,” an implication the painting also represents.
The Velvet Underground & Nico by The Velvet Underground (Andy Warhol)
Andy Warhol is a pop icon. Aside from this masterpiece related to the band, he was also the band’s mentor, manager, and producer at that time. the album is a siphoning of New York art culture of that time, packed with sleazy rhythms and controversial lyrics that fit the bill of alternate rock before the term existed. The record was delayed in order to create Warhol’s art print turned album sleeve, a banana-shaped sticker you could peel off to reveal the fruit underneath.
Artpop by Lady Gaga (Jeff Koons)
Lady Gaga’s collaboration with popular visual artist Jeff Koons made its way onto the cover of her third studio album, Art Pop, as well as on the record’s single “Applause.” We can see that Gaga is really an artistic person who reflects on merging art, music, and herself. Koons’s cover depicts Gaga’s nude with a metallic ball between her legs and portions of Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne and Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus behind her.
Without You by David Bowie (Keith Haring)
Known for his pop-graffiti street art, Keith Haring also collaborated with multiple musicians throughout the ’80s to create album art. He once shared, “Art is nothing if you don’t reach every segment of the people.” In this cover, it illustrates two of Haring’s signature characters embracing against an orange background with bold lines shooting out around them.
Colores by J Balvin (Takashi Murakami)
Columbian reggaetón singer J Balvin said in an interview that this art connected to his music is like going back to the beginning to one of the first things he loved, like all the colors in the world. He had been a fan of Japanese contemporary artists and Takashi Murakami’s powerful artwork for years, so Balvin tapped him to infuse the bright bold sound of his music into the cover art. The final artwork depicts a layered bed of Murakami’s signature 3D smiling flowers in dynamic hues of bright pink, blue, and yellow.
Sonic Nurse by Sonic Youth (Richard Prince)
Sonic Youth worked with artist and photographer Richard Prince and used a painting from his controversial “Nurse Paintings” series called Overseas Nurse for the cover. Prince reworked the covers of pulp romance novels for the series, scanned them up on canvas then reworked them with acrylic paint. The artist’s work clearly resonated with the band, since the album also features a track called “Dude Ranch Nurse,” named after another painting in the series.
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy by Kanye West (George Condo)
Hip-hop icon and pop-culture enthusiast Kanye West was self-exiled in Hawaii escaping a fallout when he placed a call to contemporary visual artist George Condo, asking if he’d collaborate on the cover art for his fifth studio album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. What happened is that, it was the creation of five visual representations of the maximalist and a self-reflective album which West referred to as his “long apology.”
The main cover is an NSFW album cover which was audacious and it depicts West under a naked winged harpy and was famously banned from multiple retailers.
