The cover has become an important part of the culture of music. Album covers became renowned for being a marketing tool and an expression of artistic intent. Gatefold covers, and inserts, often with lyric sheets, made the album cover a desirable artifact in its own right. Notable examples are The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band which had cut-out inserts, lyrics, a gatefold sleeve even though it was a single album, The Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street which had a gatefold and a series of 12 perforated postcards as inserts, and Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon which had a gatefold, lyrics, no title on the sleeve and poster and sticker inserts. The move to the small CD format lost that impact, though attempts have been made to create a more desirable packaging for the CD format, for example the re-issue of Sgt. Pepper, which had a cardboard box and booklet, or the use of oversized packaging.
A number of record covers have also used images licensed (or borrowed from the public domain) from artists of bygone eras. Well-known examples of this include the cover of Derek and the Dominoes Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs (from the painting "La Fille au Bouquet" by French painter and sculptor Emile Théodore Frandsen de Schomberg).
No comments:
Post a Comment