Would Sgt. Pepper's be exactly the same without Peter Blake's cover ? At a time when full-length records do not mean much any longer and album covers even less, I found interesting to make a website on sleeve design. Long before videos, record covers were the visual embodiment of music, a way to put images on sound. I remember having spent hours as a teenager detailing the cover of records while listening to them. Later on, I realised that some of them had things in common in their design, revealing either a mere sign of the times or a more deliberate connection. Some records even obviously copied famous sleeves, as a tribute or as a mockery. Here is a collection of record covers I came across, which share some common visual features.
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Kenny Burrell Midnight Blue (1963) |
Elvis Costello Almost Blue (1981) |
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Duke Ellington Anatomy of a Murder (1959) |
Stan Ridgway Anatomy (1999) |
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Tindersticks Working for the Man - The Greatest Hits (2005) |
Elvis Costello live with the Metropole Orkest My Flame Burns Blue (2006) |
