Memorable Album Covers of 2014: The Self-Portraits
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The album cover remains a powerful way for artists to visualize their music and their personalities, even as album sales continue to drop. In 2014, we witnessed a plethora of artists using album covers to sell their own images as well as their music to potential music buyers. "Memorable Album Covers of 2014: The Self-Portraits," provides compelling examples of how artists revaled their faces to the world via pictures that ranged from the surreal to the sensual. The presentation contains speaker notes.
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Memorable Album Covers of 2014: The Self-Portraits
- 1. Memorable Album Covers of 2014: The Self-Portraits David J. Deal http://www.davidjdeal.com December 2014
- 2. 2014 was the year of the album cover as self-portrait Pharrell, Girl
- 3. From the surreal . . . Hozier, Hozier
- 4. To the impressionistic . . . The War on Drugs, Lost in the Dream
- 5. To the classic Betty Who, Take Me When You Go
- 6. Feast your eyes on the best of 2014 FKA Twigs, LP1
- 7. Lykkie Li, I Never Learn
- 8. Luke James, Luke James
- 9. St. Vincent, St. Vincent
- 10. PRhyme, PRhyme
- 13. Willie Nelson, Band of Brothers
- 15. David Bowie, Nothing Has Changed
- 16. K. Michelle, Anybody Wanna Buy a Heart
- 20. Flying Lotus, You’re Dead!
Editor's Notes
- In 2014, musicians once again demonstrated that album cover art still matters — even as album sales continue to drop. The album cover remains a powerful way for artists to visualize their music and their personalities. According to analyst Mary Meeker, we upload and share 1.8 billion images a day. To get our attention in a world cluttered with pictures, artists need to stand out with strong, compelling visual stories that grab our attention and don’t let go. And album cover art needs to represent the artist across a variety of online and offline touch points, ranging from concert merchandise to Twitter wallpaper.
- So it’s no wonder that in 2014, we witnessed a plethora of artists using album covers to literally sell themselves to potential music buyers. Pharrell’s face on the cover of Girl is more than an album cover: it’s a billboard that sells the artist behind the music, repeated on his website, Facebook page, and everywhere else you find Pharrell. Even someone as popular as Pharrell has only a split second to convince you to pay attention to him. So he make the most of his moment to keep the focus of your attention on him.
- But as Memorable Album Covers of 2014: The Self-Portraits, shows, artist portraits can be evocative, alluring, and anything but bland. For instance, Andrew Hozier-Byrne, known as Hozier, presents himself in a surreal image worthy of Dali.
- Adam Granduciel of indie band the War on Drugs is captured through a a moody, distorted image that also reflects the tone of the band’s album, Lost in the Dream.
- And Betty Who’s Take Me When You Go opts for a throwback look that evokes the clean, album classical designs of vocalists from the 1950s and 1960s.
- Especially as artists continue to struggle to monetize their music, you can expect album cover art to continue to grab our attention, as FKA Twigs certainly does with LP1. Popular music has, and always will be, a visual medium as well as aural one. Even as the music industry continues to change, you can take that assumption to the bank as you feast your eyes on the best album cover self-portraits of 2014.