Pop Stars And The Art Of Album Art
Album covers that'll make you go "hmm".
What’s in an album art? It’s an integral part of the musical process; it’s what the listener first sees when clicking on an album on any streaming service of buying a CD or LP at a store. First impressions are everything as they say, and what you see can make you interested in something you normally wouldn’t be or turn you off from a record completely. Several stars of the music world have upcoming releases with album art that’ve made me pause as of late, and where better to start than with someone who we’ve been waiting over seven years to drop a new record?
I don’t look to Cardi B for high art, but something about the cover for her new album Am I The Drama? just rubs me the wrong way. We’re in a day and age of rap album covers that have advanced well past bling rap covers with the rapper front and center with goofy text/things next to them. No only does this look like a lazy variant of something that’d have been trendy 15 years ago, it’s so CG heavy that it hurts. The ravens that surround her look extremely fake and the background could’ve been grabbed from the creative section of Getty Images. Worst of all? Cardi B is an artist with personality to spare; here she looks completely lifeless. I should be more annoyed with the record containing 23 songs (entirely too many) and several tracks released in the last several years (lazy), but I’m here wondering what the hell she and her creative team were thinking here.
It’s a questionable cover for an album that’ll get a ton of streams regardless, and the same can be said for Sabrina Carpenter’s artwork for Man’s Best Friend. Unlike what Cardi B did, Sabrina might’ve put too much thought into what she was doing here...
I can understand where all the hoopla surrounding the art came from, but do people not realize that art like this is meant to be satirical? The message here is not that Sabrina wants to encourage misogynistic practices, it’s to make fun of them. Her music is all about reclaiming her sexuality all for herself, and how she’s gonna have fun doing it. Hell, the album’s title is clearly a dig at how derogatory calling a woman a “bitch”. It’s surface level commentary that’s clearly a mockery. It may be bad satire, but it’s satire! The pearl-clutching surrounding this even forced Sabrina to come out with an alternate cover that’s “god approved”. God only knows what I’d give for people to do some research before overreacting to topics they don’t understand.
But you know what I really don’t understand, but kind of do? What Wet Leg are doing with the album art to their upcoming album Moisturizer…
Wet Leg’s brand of indie rock has a wild edge to it for sure, but the second I saw this art, I haven’t been able to get it out of my head in a bad way. Rhian Teasdale’s smile is like that of a horror movie villain, matched by the sharp claws both her and Hester Chambers rock. It’s like the two were facing away from the camera on the art for their debut record to hide the fact that they’re feral beyond belief, and I kind of wish they stayed that way. My biggest problem though? Teasdale’s lack of eyebrows. Lady Gaga has been doing the same thing with the bleach blonde eyebrows and it’s just not a very flattering look. They’re there for a reason!
Once these records are unleashed unto the masses (Wet Leg’s in July, Sabrina Carpenter’s in August and Cardi B’s in September), will the common listener be as mortified by some of these choices as I am? The trend of pop star albums eschewing effort last year when it comes to album covers says no; the biggest album of 2024 was nothing more than a lime green eyesore. The level of effort, proper or misplaced, puts these in a different category to last year’s trend in my eyes. If the music within is good, it won’t matter, but there’ll be hell to pay if any of these things flop.
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