Y O Y O Y

Could this be the greatest album cover of all time?

That is the question next to a picture of the cover from Nirvana's Nevermind album, which confronted me when I signed into my e-mail account today. The question linked to a poll, which, out of curiosity, I took part in myself.

There have been mutterings on this blog recently concerning questions of artistic taste, and I have felt the need to express my feelings of alienation from mainstream, or to use a slightly less cliched phrase, culturally prevalent tastes. Well, there's nothing very original about turning one's nose up at the mainstream, is there? And yet it seems inevitable or necessary for me, unfortunately. This poll is a case in point, not that I was expecting it to be stimulating or challenging. I still, however, managed to be disappointed, even with my low expectations, by the choice of album covers offered (my own choices being limited by the very crap choices someone else had already made for me). It's not that I hated all the albums that had made the selection, but was this really meant to be a vote about the greatest album cover of all time? As I said in the comments section of the entry I linked to above, people are weirded out so easily. I am reminded of one of those crappy '100 greatest' programmes that was on television a little while back, for the 100 greatest albums. By public vote (apparently) U2's The Joshua Tree hit the number one spot. The person with whom I was watching remarked that, by and large, people seem impressed when artists move away from complete blandness towards the edge of something, but any artist who goes over that edge manages to lose the audience completely. U2, with their appropriately named guitarist, probably mark the optimum positioning in terms of the majority of the audience thinking that you're 'far out'. And this is a very sad reflection. I'm trying to think of some sort of cliched phrase (there's a term for these expressions where you use the same formula but change one of two of the words) like 'my dad is further out than U2' to express how near in they actually are, but, the thing is, it already really goes without saying that my dad is considerably further out than U2, and I can't think of anything near enough in that it would hold the element of surprise that it might be further out than U2. If you see what I mean.

Having reached the midway point of my natural life-span, I'm not so likely to be impressed by 'pop stars' anymore, anyway, even the 'alternative' ones, who, I begin to see, are the people I knew at school who were stupider and less talented even than a good-for-nothing such as myself. But, you know, some music has been good for me over the years, so let's humour the musos for a while and look at some of the 'cover art' that they didn't even create themselves anyway, starting with the cover of Nevermind. Actually, out of all the album covers selected for the poll, this is certainly one of the better ones. At least it has some discernible thought behind it. There's a baby, a fishing hook, and a dollar bill on the hook. I get it. Biting satire with a hint of existentialism. Reminds me of Pink Floyd in some ways. Yeah, it works. Not subtle, but it works. It even seems to have some genuine and pointed anger behind it, which is good. The only problem with it, for myself and I suspect for many others, is that it smells a bit like teen spirit. It seems a little too close to the cover art equivalent of saying, "Yeah, smash the system!" A statement that can be lucrative. Remembering one or two annoying parties I attended in my early twenties at which numbers of people were leaping around drunkenly to Smells Like Teen Spirit as if they were being somehow edgy by doing so, and looking at this cover again, I begin to think that, perhaps more than anything, this cover smells of money. "Smash the system!" sells a lot of posters and T-shirts. We all know that. Kurt Cobain undoubtedly knew that, too. But did those who took this 'cover art' seriously and leapt about to Smells Like Teen Spirit? There must be some level of irony to this cover, but what level, exactly? Is it meant to fool people, or is everyone meant to perceive its irony straightaway? The whole thing is in distinct danger of collapsing out of sheer vacuousness. At least, as Momus has commented elsewhere, Kurt Cobain had the integrity to kill himself.

And that's one of the better album covers.

And, actually, it's tired me out analysing even that, so I'm not sure I want to go through a whole stack of these. Let's see…

The cover of Exile on Main Street:

I've never liked The Rolling Stones. I've always preferred Led Zeppelin. Really. Robert Plant has a much better voice, and, if you want rock'n'roll, why not go the whole way and really have rock'n'roll? Jagger's voice is boring. Keith Richards is boring. The pace of the songs is boring. (Am I the only person who prefers the Bowie cover of Let's Spend the Night Together to the Stones version?) The lyrics are boring. When I was doing my A-levels, my teacher for English literature, noticing, I suppose, some unusual enthusiasm in my essays, took me aside and gave me some copies of various works by Jean-Paul Sartre to read. He also related a story of when he was younger. He'd gone into a bar with a friend and some band came on playing very bad blues, and his friend and he looked at each other and said, "Let's go." That band was The Rolling Stones.

Anyway, so, the album cover. This is a montage of various circus freaks and artistes of the ring. This reminds me of one of my favourite films of all time, Freaks. I even suspect (but I haven't done my homework) that some of the people in these photographs might have appeared in Tod Browning's film. Apparently these pictures were not assembled especially for the cover. Instead, the cover is a photograph taken of an existing montage of photographs on the wall of a tattoo parlour. Actually, I like this. It's a nice idea. If I were to be critical I would simply say that photo montages as cover art are overdone and perhaps a bit lazy – a shortcut to appearing arty in a rough-around-the-edges kind of way. But a candidate for the greatest album cover of all time? It would be quite low down my list.

Next, the cover of London Calling by The Clash:

I will say immediately that I like this cover. Instinctively. I think it's great. Damn! We're not getting any covers that I can shoot down in flames. I'm going to have to change the whole tone of this blog entry.

So, why do I like it? Well, it's just a great, great photograph. I'm going to appear to contradict myself now, by raving over a photograph of a rock guitarist (or punk, come on, it's the same thing really, isn't it?) smashing up his instrument, after being cynical (I'm not cynical really, honest) about teenagers wanting to smash the system (and it is, after all, a laudable aspiration). But, despite being a cliche, this photograph works. It was caught at the right moment. The pose is… Babylonian, predicting some great collapse. It is Samson pulling down the pillars around himself. It is Sodom and Gomorrah.

Also, there's a homage to an Elvis album cover in the typography:

Hmmm. After all, these album covers aren't bad. And yet I feel like the overall selection was too safe and lacklustre.

I'd like to suggest, off the top of my head, a few other album covers that could have been introduced to the proceedings to prevent the whole thing from being as utterly suffocating as it is:

Into the Pandemonium by Celtic Frost:

Okay, so, as often happens, they basically just stole something from a greater artist, in this case Heironymus Bosch, but it was a theft well done. I stared at this cover for hours in my youth.

Hunky Dory by David Bowie:

Yes, it's very simple, and yes, Bowie already has at least one other entry in the poll, but if this one has been overlooked, then I'm not sure how. Bowie's made a career out of being enigmatic, but he's seldom looked more enigmatic than this. Some say that they see a resemblance to Greta Garbo. And the colouring is artfully done.

Boys for Pele by Tori Amos.

Tori somehow manages to work up a sense of dreamlike, almost Dali-esque, suggestion in this photograph. Some of the other photographs in the packaging of that album were even better.

Oskar Tennis Champion by Momus:

Delicate and otherworldly. Cut-out silhouettes and so on suggest a puppet theatre that blends into a never-ending backstage of different realities, each giving way to the next.

You know, I'm only just warming up to this, but I'm very tired and I need to adjust my body in various ways to alleviate this situation, so, actually, I'll throw the floor open and ask for the suggestions of readers as to what album covers should have been selected. I'm afraid my choices, too, were slightly staid.