What a title is to a novel, an album cover is to that musical piece of work. Album cover arts can be thought of as an evocation of the essence of the whole body of work- either shaping or shocking receivers’ reaction even before they have played the first track. Point is, an album cover is much more than an advertising space for the artist’s portrait, it is one of the ways for them to call for and capture the audience’s attention to their work. Some album arts soothe us, some do not really make a mark but there are also album covers that can shock us beyond explanations. Here are some of the most controversial album cover images that left quite a few mouths hanging open on the air:
The Beatles: Yesterday And Today
Image Credit: amusicofmysoul.blogspot.com
Yesterday and Today was a collection of selected recent songs of The Beatles that was released in 1966. The unsuspecting fans of the band were left wide-eyed at the album jacket photo that had the four members of the group in butcher coats, covered in pieces of raw meat and burnt doll parts.
Kanye West: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Image Credit: 2dopeboyz.com
Kanye West is no stranger to controversy and with his album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, he took it a notch higher. The album was filled with explicit lyrics but nothing caused a ruckus like the cover art itself that had a painted image of a naked man being straddled by a demonic, phoenix woman.
Guns N’ Roses: Appetite For Destruction
Image Credit: discogs.com
After MTV refused to air any of the music videos from this album, the cover for Appetite for Destruction was changed to avoid more conflict. But the real album art had an image that showed a robot violently attacking a semi-nude, vulnerable woman.
Crystal Castles: Crystal Castles
Image Credit: redbubble.net
The band grabbed quite a significant number of eyeballs but surely not in a good way with their self-titled album, all thanks to their album cover that had the image of a beaten and injured face of Madonna, The reaction against this particular cover was so intense that they had to alter it for the later versions.
Good or bad, right or wrong- all these binaries aside, it is important to remember that art is an expression of the self. And the self is not always something bright and illuminated- it has its fair shares of dark corners too. The artists like the ones mentioned above, who dare to go down tracing that darkness, come up with things that are bizarre, shocking or even nauseating to us. But it is also a valuable peep inside their minds and instincts that help us understand their art, no matter what motive they sprout from.
