AOL Music Canada's Best. Album Covers. Ever -- NOT
I did my review over “AOL Music Canada's Best. Album Covers. Ever.”. And I have to say, I was pretty disappointed. According to the title of the article I was expecting to see some very interesting cover art. Most of the covers I saw were very boring in my opinion. Many were just in there because of the popularity of the band or the fact that the cover is well known; not because the album cover was the “best”. In my opinion as a Computer Graphics major, to be considered as one of the best album covers, the album cover has to look interesting and be something that sticks out to you.
I will now review a few of the covers in the listing.
The first album in the list “Nirvana - Nevermind” is in my opinion a good cover. It is an interesting image that captures your attention. The fact that the picture is taken underwater and that there is a baby swimming towards a dollar is very unusual and drawls your eye to it right away.
The fourth album cover “The Beatles - "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band”, in my opinion shouldn’t be considered one of the best. I agree that this is a very famous and well known album cover as well as a very famous and well known band. But for the cover itself, it just doesn’t seem that aesthetically pleasing to me.
The fifth album cover “Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon”, is just like the one before. I have seen this cover so many times that it is easily recognizable, and I’m sure it is for most others too. But think if you never heard of Pink Floyd, and have never heard about or have seen this cover. What would you think about it the first time you looked at it? You would probably think this band just took a picture from an elementary science textbook about lights and prisms and used it as a cover. Doesn’t sound very interesting does it? I think that "Pink Floyd’s A Saucerful of Secrets" (http://www.allfloyd.com/images/covers/saucer.jpg) is a more interesting cover that would be more likely to catch your eye. It is just not as well known as Dark Side of the Moon.
The eleventh album cover “N.W.A. - 'Straight Outta Compton” is the worst in the list. There isn’t anything interesting about this cover to me at all. This image of a group of people in a huddle looking down at you is overdone in my opinion. Maybe not necessarily in album covers but in sport movies.
Just quickly going through some of my albums, I found a few that I thought looked better than some on this list. The first I came across was "Flyleaf" (http://www.praying-for-hollywood.com/images/gfx/flyleaf_cd_350px.jpg). This image of the guy walking with the birds attached to him easily catches your eyes. Another cover is "The Birthday Massacre – Walking with strangers" (http://img3.nnm.ru/imagez/gallery/a/3/d/a/5/a3da5dbfe9d3fdd43282cd2e6d9f...). In my opinion this is one of my favorite album covers ever. The fact that they use a monochromatic color scheme really catches your eyes, and the fact that it is purple, which is a color that is not used very often helps too. The image also has an creepy feel to it which makes you want to look to see what going on, yet at the same time the children running around with bunny ears has a conflicting feeling. These two together give the image a unique and interesting look.
I agree with you on the Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon cover. I have seen it more times than I can count, but it just really doesn't strike me as interesting. There might be some kind of inner meaning Pink Floyd was trying to get across, but its too deep for me to see.
Submitted by Silento on Wed, 02/06/2008 - 00:00.I think the point of the N.W.A. cover being in the top list is the fact that it was the first entry of the "gangsta-rap" genre, and you don't get much more "gangsta" than a gang standing over someone with a gun.
It's not for me, but I think for the audience it is intended for, it fits perfectly.
I'm wondering who actually compiled this list of Best Album Covers. Was it run through AOL staff or was it given by some random person stating an opinion? What validity is behind this?
I think most of those cover albums are more so audience accurate rather than good cover art. It doesn't matter how good looking an album cover is as long as it speaks to its' intended audience. You made a good point about the Pink Floyd album. It's popular so that might have given its' stature of being good cover art memorabilia, unfortunately. If I didn't know who Pink Floyd was I'd be wondering why he's incorporated scientific symbolism. Well, he was on a chemical trip, eh?
As far as cover art goes with capturing the music feel and the artist(s) themselves these do a great job. They let their listeners know who they are, sometimes you might have to do some digging to figure that out. Cover art to an album can't be separated from the album's audience so in a sense strictly good cover art won't fly to well if it's just for the sake of design, but having an audience to be targeted by the cover art is good cover design.
Submitted by colgrunt on Wed, 02/06/2008 - 02:11.