Album Covers

Definition
An album cover is the front of the packaging of a commercially released audio recording product, or album. 

History
In the 1920's, music was sold in collections known as 'albums', this at the time was a vinyl in a clear sleeve which would have had the artist name and title of the album written on the front of it. In 1938, Columbia Records hired Alex Steinweiss as an art director, it was this that brought about the invention of album covers. After this being introduced, in the 1940s other companies began to follow the new trend of including album artwork. From the 1950s through 1960s, LPs were the most popular form of music, they were sold in a cardboard sleeve which was printed with an album cover to represent the band/album.In the 1980s CDs became popular and they were sold in plastic cases with the album cover inside, this is still hugely recognisable in stores. A huge amount of music sales in recent times though is online downloads, this means that people do not hold a physical copy of an album so therefore do not need the packaging. Album covers still come with the albums, but it is a digital version of it. As of 2008, CDs still sold more than album downloads, but figures are constantly changing and downloads are catching up, but I think that album covers are still important because they help fans to recognise their music and can add character to an album as opposed to just giving them a name.

Favourite Album Cover

Nirvana - Nevermind

This is an album that I have liked since I was only young, I have always been a fan of Nirvana and this album cover is completely unique and recognised straight away by the majority of people. The album cover shown is a circumcised baby boy that appears to be chasing after a US dollar note on a fishhook. The idea was brought about when Cobain was watching a program on water births with Dave Grohl. Cobain gave his idea to the art director Robert Fisher. He managed to find some footage of water birth he thought would be useful but they turned out to be too graphic to use for this purpose. The photo that they wanted to use was also owned by the stock house that wanted £7,500 for its use. Instead of this, Fisher sent a photographer to a baby pool to take some pictures, this left the band with five shots to choose from and they settled on the image of 3 month old Spencer Elden. Elden is the son of the photographer's friend, however, there was a lot of concern because Elden's penis is shown in the picture. An alternative cover was made for the album because they were worried that the current picture would offend people, but Cobain was reluctant to change the cover and his only compromise was to put a sticker over the penis saying "If you're offended by this, you must be a closet paedophile". This was not how the company wanted the album to look so they allowed the original idea to go on display. The album was released on September 24, 1991 and has sold over 30 million copies worldwide. This album cover defined Nirvana and members of the public recognise this album as one of their most successful albums because of the song "Smells Like Teen Spirit".