by It really is bizarre what pushes people’s buttons these days.
People getting riled up by album artwork should be something of the past. Partially because of the fact that album artwork is most often a tiny collection of pixels on a phone screen, glimpsed before you put your phone back into your pocket on your walk to work. The other side of this, though, is the fact that we should be tougher to shock than this, surely? The information age has put the entirety of human knowledge in that pocket, and I hate to break it to you, that includes some dark shit.
Yet even before that, the 21st century wasn’t the first time that human suffering was being beamed into our conscience. The Vietnam War was putting images of mutilated humanity into the living rooms of the world in the 1960s, yet that was seemingly fine. That was news, it was important for everyone to know about that. You put a piece of art on an album cover though, that’s when you’re a corrupting influence on the world’s children.
To be clear, that’s not to let generations of artists off the hook. The description we hear of the cover of Spinal Tap’s Smell The Glove was actually pretty tame in comparison to what some hard rock dullards were trying to pass off in the 1970s and 1980s. It still didn’t make Tipper Gore’s crusade against music with “unacceptable content” any more of an attempt to stifle free speech, but it was pretty gross. Look up the original cover to Appetite For Destruction for more info but for God’s sake, not on image search.
Then, we move into the present day. Despite living in the 21st century, there are still album covers that get people in a flap, even when you’re not looking at the underground or underground-adjacent albums. Look up the original cover for Death Grips’ No Love Deep Web for more info, but FOR GOD’S SAKE, not on image search. Even in the mainstream, the cover for Sabrina Carpenter’s Man’s Best Friend made many horrible people cross and the question remains… why?!
What makes an album cover unacceptable?
After all, we’re in an age where the music world is dominated by female pop stars. We have been for the past 20-odd years. All of which have the clout to (seemingly) present themselves the way they want, and for a large amount of them, they want to present themselves in a way that shows the world what it already knows. That a lot of these people are among the most beautiful people on the planet. If I were one of them, I can’t say I wouldn’t do the same.
Now, in a depressing way, you’d expect the pushback on the Sabrina Carpenter cover now. After all, women doing what they please with their bodies is undergoing a carefully constructed cultural pushback. It’s just part of the more rigid form of conservatism that a few mega-rich people are funding to push back against the overwhelming proof that they’re ruining the planet. Yet even in 2010, when the first wave of female pop stars were taking over and only most of the world’s information sources were controlled by outright fascists, Sky Ferreira got people’s backs up with the cover of her debut album Night Time, My Time.
Which is annoying, because the cover is fantastic. Shot by Gaspar Noe, the genius behind films like Enter The Void, Climax and I Stand Alone, Ferreira stands in a green tiled shower. She’s soaked through and staring out at someone or something behind the camera, an unknowable look in her eye. It cooked be fear, or revulsion or suspicion, we just know it’s nothing good. It introduces us to the vulnerable, yet scathing album perfectly. Except that Ferreira is topless on the cover. Which makes it bad. Apparently.
A compromise was made that the version of the album art listed on streaming sites would crop out Ferreira’s chest. Which is at the very least a damn site better than what happened to Sabrina Carpenter’s album, which had to have its (also brilliant) cover replaced outright in several outlets. When better compromises are being reached regarding how female artists want to present themselves 15 years ago, you know shit’s well and truly fucked. Here’s hoping it gets better from here.
