
The above graphic is the cover for MGMT’s forthcoming sophomore album Congratulations (April 23rd, Sony/Columbia). I’ve heard MGMT’s first CD dozens of times and I have no idea what the cover looks like. Not a clue. In fact, I can’t identify the artwork that decorates a lot of CDs I enjoy. When pressed to identify my favorite album covers from the last five years or so, I can only name a handful. Am I the only one? When and why did I stop caring about album art?

I never gave much thought to album art until I started buying vinyl. I was probably about fourteen years old at the time. Until then, the only album covers I’d seen were framed beneath hard plastic CD cases that gave even the most beautiful artwork an awkward packaged feel. At the store, those cases were wrapped in cellophane and loaded with annoying little stickers (“featuring the hit single!”); I couldn’t view an album cover without the constant reminder that I was a consumer buying a product.

But I can’t blame the record store. Even if I owned the album I’d probably read the liner notes once before struggling to slide the booklet back in without denting the corners. The cover of an album was an afterthought. It served as an easy way to recognize a CD without having to read the spine, but it didn’t have much inherent beauty. I liked good album covers (who doesn’t?). Still, I’m not sure I would’ve ever called the cover of an album “beautiful.” (Actually, at fourteen I don’t know if I would’ve ever called anything “beautiful,” but that’s beside the point.)

When I started buying vinyl I started paying attention to album art. The covers felt so much more substantial and, well, beautiful. The covers themselves were works of art rather than simply part of some machine-processed, shrink-wrapped package. Maybe the difference was that vinyl covers were so much bigger. Or maybe it was because buying vinyl meant flipping through hundreds of records and looking at each cover one-at-a-time instead of scanning a wall of CDs and seeing multiple covers simultaneously. Maybe it was just a coincidence. I don’t know. Whatever the reason, I fell in love with album art.

It’s important to remember that music wasn’t always accompanied by artwork. Cavemen in a drum circle (why do I always picture this as the “birth of music?”) just had their banging. Mozart never had an album cover. In fact, there was no such thing as album art until the vinyl album. Album art was just a way of decorating the thick cardboard packaging needed to protect delicate records. Then it decorated CD cases. Now it “decorates” the screen of an iPhone. Album artwork has been grandfathered in from an earlier time when a cover was big and glossy.

There’s room for debate about whether music sounds better on vinyl. But album art always looks its best on a big vinyl sleeve. Sure, it’s the same picture you find on the CD or on your iPod screen. But the vinyl cover feels like it has more artistic merit. Don’t think so? Consider this: hanging some vinyl-sized album covers on your wall is a trendy/retro-chic way to decorate your apartment. But hang six CD booklets on your wall and you’ll be laughed at. It looks totally ridiculous, one step above hanging a bunch of videogame instruction manuals.

But here’s the problem: people don’t buy vinyl albums anymore. Downloaded music often comes with album art, but even a fantastic high-resolution cover is reduced to a desktop thumbnail or sequestered to the bottom left corner in iTunes. I don’t intend to come off as some old geezer complaining about how album art is “too damn small these days.” But album art just doesn’t look as good on anything but a big vinyl sleeve. It doesn’t matter how awesome the graphic is, it’s going to look bad when it’s put on an electronic device that fits in my pocket. Hence, I don’t know a lot of modern album covers because I listen to music on my computer or on an iPod and the artwork is shrunk down so much that I essentially ignore it.
(As an aside, I think dance music stands out as a genre with a lot of singles rather than complete albums. Many singles have artwork, but a fair amount of bootlegs and remixes never get a “proper” release and float around as art-less MP3s.)

Here’s an optimistic prediction: album art will change to take advantage of new technology. It’s not implausible, since this is exactly how album art developed in the first place. There’s plenty of room for album art to evolve. It just hasn’t happened yet.
If you know your album cover is going to be viewed primarily on iPods, why not get creative? How about animated album art. Animated .gifs are a cinch to make. There could be an album cover that changes colors every day of the week. Or a photograph that rotates seasonally. What if the cover changed every day like the Google homepage? Album art that moved to the beat of the music? Something interactive that I can play with rather than look at? “Album art” could be any number of things. The transition from vinyl to MP3 doesn’t necessarily mean the end of album art. It might simply mean the end of traditional album art and the rise of, for lack of a better term, non-traditional album art.

I don’t know if those ideas are cool or not. Maybe they work better in theory than in practice. I recently went to an exhibit at New York’s Museum of Modern Art that featured digital and interactive artwork. Sounds kinda cool, right? I thought so. But I found it all a little gimmicky. None of the pieces had the same warmth of, say, a painting. The iphone-app-as-album-art idea might not work for the same reason. Then again, some art critics panned the use of the silkscreen when it was first invented, and history’s been deservedly kind to that Warhol guy.
A bigger issue is the computer science behind all these ideas. I’ve never written code for an iPhone and I have no idea how iTunes processes album artwork. Maybe it can’t display anything more than a static image. I hope that’s not the case. But even if it is, it probably won’t be that way forever. Imagine what iTunes version 20 is going to be like. All it takes is one album to get things going. And if a big artist like John Mayer wants his album cover to dance, Apple will probably make it happen.
Album art isn’t dead. But it’s stale because we’re looking at it on tiny little screens instead of the big vinyl sleeves for which it was originally intended. Everything else in the music world is has changed in the last fifty years. Why should album art be the one exception?

This song has nothing to do with what I wrote about above. I just wanted to post it because it’s so damn good. Remember the opening scene of Boogie Nights that’s three minutes long and filmed in one uncut crane-to-Steadicam take? This song is what plays in the background. Whenever someone tells me “I don’t like disco,” I make them listen to this. If it doesn’t change their mind, nothing will.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
The Emotions – Best Of My Love
Here’s a more club-friendly version that beatmaps the original to a steady drumbeat (and includes a relatively simple intro and outro). If you’re a DJ, you’ll want to grab this second MP3 to use in a set.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
The Emotions – Best of My Love (Dance Edit)