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Post by ap on Jul 18, 2021 14:23:11 GMT -5
Eye-catching album covers can go a long way toward increased sales. Would Iron Maiden have grabbed as much attention without the artwork of Derek Riggs? I'm not so sure. With that said, sometimes artists shoot themselves in the foot with poor album cover choices. Case in point:
#1: Done With Mirrors
You're a world class band who have fallen on a rough five year stretch, fractured and dysfunctional. Your classic lineup has reformed and you're restarting the big machine. How do you ensure the public is aware, and grabbing up your new record?
you release it with a cover that features no logo, no group photo and backwards text. Oh, and make sure to choose benign pastel colours too.
I remember waiting for it's arrival, scanning the New Release racks and looking for the wings. It took a couple passes before I realized the least eye-catching thing on the rack was it.
What the hell?
Granted, the band was still a tad shwacked out, but who came up with this nonsense, and -more importantly- who convinced the band that this was a good idea?
Wings front and centre. Band photo, Joe and Brad front and centre. Vibrant colour. Still want the title backwards? Fine. With the other specifics in place, that's not such a negative factor.
As it was, Done With Mirrors was a terribly self defeating marketing campaign that likely cost them sales. From a band with such iconic covers as Rocks, Toys and Draw, this was a perplexingly bad choice.
Dig the record, but that cover truly sucked.
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Post by warmaker on Jul 18, 2021 16:19:19 GMT -5
Very interesting observation, indeed! I have never really given this much thought, but now that you "said it out loud" it actually makes sense. It could (should) have been better
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Post by AeroCooper on Jul 18, 2021 17:05:06 GMT -5
The cover can definitely make or break an album. Even worse than DWM is MFAD, in my opinion. While it does at least feature the band name and logo, it is hard to take this bad cartoon drawing seriously.
Reminds me too much of KISS' worst album cover as well.
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Post by ap on Jul 18, 2021 18:09:24 GMT -5
Totally agree on MFAD. At best, it looks cheap and amateurish. Two words that should never apply to a band of Aerosmith's stature.
The other obvious contender is Just Push Play. Unlike the majority, I don't dislike the record, but the cover was definitely cringe-worthy. The bright pink was off-putting enough, but to utilize the same artist/robot girl that had previously adorned an Autograph record just struck me as weak. Again, a band of Aerosmith's stature shouldn't be reduced to the proverbial sloppy seconds of a lesser band.
As for Kiss, I'll call your Unmasked, and raise you an Asylum. That was brutal. Like Done With Mirrors, also 1985. I wonder if they both employed the same subpar creative consultants? Dynasty was pretty horrible as well. Peter's crooked makeup, Gene's proctology exam face. Yeesh. Why they didn't use the much cooler poster image for the cover, I'll never understand. That record killed Kiss for me. Until 1996 anyways.
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Post by aerozhul on Jul 28, 2021 12:45:37 GMT -5
Conversely, I think that all of the studio album covers from the self-titled debut through Nine Lives are impressive, even Done With Mirrors (at least it was something different, originally printed backwards and intended to be viewed in a mirror). It’s kind of interesting that the creativity level of the album artwork on each was parallel to the (for the most part) creativity of the music content up until we get to Just Push Play, when I think we can all agree the quality took a nosedive for both, and never recovered. If you think about it, each of the studio album covers were innovative in their own way, and that effort is noticeably missing from the artwork of JPP, MFAD and (to a lesser extent), HOB. Those three album covers seemed pretty lazy compared to what came before.
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darkpoet
Pushing Play
Posts: 19
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May 18, 2020 3:18:39 GMT -5
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Post by darkpoet on Jul 29, 2021 21:32:42 GMT -5
Agreed on album covers. Not to say a great album cover would turn a platter of noise into musical gold, but a bad cover can kill a release, especially if there is heavy promotion done. In Aerosmith's case, I think the DWM cover, while a cool concept, flat-out confused a lot of people that weren't die hard followers...too cryptic. The cool Aerosmith wings weren't even in one corner to remind us it's our band. I like the darkness of the cover and the songs thematically, but different cover needed.
As for JPP, what a joke of a cover. Not only felt recycled, but it was too prissy for a rock band such as Aerosmith. Someone once posted that the album should have had a cool blue cover with more of a kicked backed vibe instead of the robot in yellow against a pink backdrop lol. Imagine something like the RIAHP logo with the 'play button' pointing skyward...that would have been SO MUCH BETTER visually speaking, even modernized somehow. I loved the band's logo from the 80's through 2002 with the simple, not-too-busy wings and A with the name at the bottom. Great stuff. Since Honkin on Bobo it's just too cluttered. Anyhow, re: album covers, my favorite stretch was PV through Nine Lives.
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darkpoet
Pushing Play
Posts: 19
Join Date:
May 18, 2020 3:18:39 GMT -5
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Post by darkpoet on Jul 29, 2021 21:41:21 GMT -5
Great point about Derek Riggs. Those covers he created were amazing. I remember being drawn to them before I heard much of the music based on the art. Case in point, their upcoming album was one they allowed extra time for artwork once they knew the pandemic was delaying live shows. So, they've always been deliberate and detailed with their album covers. Between their iconic covers and Eddie as mascot, Maiden sure have helped their cause and their covers are instantly eye-catching. After he retired, the cover quality dipped a bit, though still high.
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Post by krawhitham222 on Jul 29, 2021 22:48:50 GMT -5
I've never thought of the MFAD cover as a "bad cartoon drawing". It's very clearly a homage to classic comic book covers and/or classic B-movie posters. The kind of thing that the band would go see with Jack Douglas back in the day (you all know the 'Walk This Way' story, for example). Like, here's a poster for the 1956 horror film 'The Creature Walks Among Us' ayay.co.uk/backgrounds/b_movie_posters/1950s/THE-CREATURE-WALKS-AMONG-US.jpg . You can see the inspiration. So I've never thought of it as a *bad* drawing, but rather a *good* drawing referencing some classic 'bad' art. And that distinction matters, because that classic 'bad' art is very nostalgic for some people and evokes a very specific sense.
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Post by AeroCooper on Jul 30, 2021 6:13:54 GMT -5
Yeah, I was generalizing with "bad cartoon drawing". I get what they were going for, but how does it relate to anything Aerosmith? "From another Dimension", sure...but to me this was not a good concept for a modern rock album. Now, if they were doing another pure cover album of music from the 50's/60's (such as I'm Not Talking) it would have been perfect.
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Post by aerozhul on Aug 2, 2021 12:31:38 GMT -5
Yeah, I was generalizing with "bad cartoon drawing". I get what they were going for, but how does it relate to anything Aerosmith? "From another Dimension", sure...but to me this was not a good concept for a modern rock album. Now, if they were doing another pure cover album of music from the 50's/60's (such as I'm Not Talking) it would have been perfect. Plus it’s recycled - they did a riff on this back in the mid ‘90s with a commercial on MTV that was in black and white and had the band members gigantic-sized tearing through big cities. I don’t remember what it was for, but Saddle was the background song - they were promoting something. Anyone remember this?
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