What are your experiences with and knowledge about that kind?

Hi,

The "standard" for me, was Hipgnosis, that also worked as a sort of small "editorial" as to how interesting, or worth while the music was. Sometimes it was "raw" (Edgar Broughton Band) and other times it was funny, but also showed it was not exactly big time (the cover where the hubcap looks like a flying saucer), and then at times, it was very much on par with the band's work (10CC) ... and I specially like their cover for Capability Brown's album VOICE ... and that album is a masterpiece when it comes to the vocal parts in their material. The long cut is stunning. And I doubt many of us do not remember the first two albums by Flash ... and I've often wondered if that was Sherry, the lady that used to post a lot of stuff on the band a few years back. Regardless, while sexist (you could say) the material is actually as nice and good as the picture seems to suggest ... but that might be my man side speaking, and I accept that. And then you see the original cover for one Be-Bop Deluxe cover, and you go wow ... not to mention that Scorpions original cover for their 3rd album was also hard core and censored really quick. Not sure what that might suggest for the music by Scorpions, but what the heck, the album was not that good, but it was worth having for the cover alone?

I like a lot of the early posters at the Fillmore, even though they were a lot more about the experience of the music at the place, than they were about the music itself, but you really had to go see it, and end up thinking how well the posters showed up the work on the stage ... it was neat, and it's a real shame that there are not a whole lot more "recordings" from that era, specially the SF shows ... and I'm betting that the Billy Graham estate has them, but they are not looking for the ability to release the materials.

All in all, the Amon Duul 2 covers for a while were done by the same person that also played keyboards, and some of the work is actually fascinating and strange, although seeing yourself in a cockpit of a spaceship in space traveling through the visuals in your mind, is a bit daunting, but it is really well done, and then the cover of "Wolf City" is magnificent, like picking up the invisible energies in the music, and the inside cover is another crazy imaginary scene in your mind ... which is very AD2 for the majority of their work.

Covers are interesting, but the fact of the matter, specially in the USA, bands do not work alongside many other artists with which they can share their work and come up with new ideas. NY had some of it in the early days of the VU, but the fame, fortune, and money, and of course the cardboard Andy, killed that ability for everyone else I thought. Even weirder, is Kim Gordon's book about her band ... as much as she was a part of the artistic side of NY, the covers showed nothing for it, which I think it was just something that the rest of the band could not exactly relate to.

Some other covers that are very thoughtful and interesting ... ECM ... and in many ways it really speaks a lot about the music they put out for many years, likely with the exception of the works by Keith Jarrett, that have what I would think some not as clear, or as good covers, when compared to his work. I have a feeling that he felt himself very far apart, and different from what any "artist" could come up with for a cover ... but that's just a thought.

I would like to see a larger/wider acceptance of the artist's community within rock music, but the commercial attitude and the song formats, probably have done away with possible ideas and concepts that might explain the music better ... and as such, I think it brings down the quality of the music and the work in general.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.loudersound.com%2Ffeatures%2Fcover-story-elp-tarkus&psig=AOvVaw1s5-78nv4bmicqsGoo6_Y7&ust=1683148409810000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CBAQjRxqFwoTCICVxtTG1_4CFQAAAAAdAAAAABAE" rel="nofollow">

http://www.progarchives.com/Review.asp?id=1571683" rel="nofollow - http://www.progarchives.com/Review.asp?id=1571683

If they would just airbrush the band out of the cover for Love Beach, it would offer a much different impression.

That being said...this is MUCH better !

You should tell that in this thread     https://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=104580" rel="nofollow - Most Overrated Band of the 'Big Six'    

if it's not too late. lol

^ I can also do it myself if I may quote you. 

Hi,

Another thought ... I'm not sure that most folks that were not around in the 60's, 70's and early 80's can quite relate to the "art" in so many albums, regardless of how many we post and show ... the "artwork" itself is too far "removed" from the music scene that the youngsters have grown up with ... and understanding it, would be really tough and then some. Likewise, a lot of us older folks, might look at the quasi-gottamakelooklikeart stuff that DT has done, and the first thing that goes through our minds is ... too much of nothing, and one detail is missing ... the greatest thing in art ... is ITS SIMPLICITY ... and you fall for it ... and then you see a bunch of nothing symbols that supposedly mean something and it's hard to not roll my eyes and eyebrows and say ... wake up guys!

This is likely, my biggest take from the 60's and 70's ... all the art ... you can't say the same thing for the 90's and anything after, just about! And that should tell you that what came out of that psychedelic haze was an artistic scene that developed into progressive ... and 30 years later, is empty music that has no art in it, because there is no artistic scene for them to work with and learn/share from.And it's a bit worse, in seeing some of the folks requesting to be considered into PA and probably PF, although their setup and system is more fan oriented (afaik), though I tend to dislike that since the whole of "progressive" music was an anti the establishment thing, with different rules away from the society mold and the top ten ... and guess what we are doing ... hurting the ability of new folks to learn from something else other than the top ten and the "fan's choices" ... many of which are no different than the Animals that went after the pink pig's parts at Anaheim Stadium and many other places!

Hi,

Hahahaha ... nice ... however, I'm not sure that ELP was so much about that, as it was about something else in music, and they even disliked that they had to do it to cover some money, but in reality, I don't think that it meant that much to them, because what they did with an orchestra and an audience, was an achievement and then some that 99% of all musicians will never experience, and all of a sudden, sadly enough, they are grossly in debt ... and have to do an album to pay for it ... hopefully. Not sure this was ever paid, but the re-releases of the albums over the years, I'm sure more than covered all of it.

To me, ELP was not about really about the stuff, but the stories are plenty about the many ... and I guess that is why that funny cover is so funny ... you don't go to an island ... but to have some fun, usually, right?

I kinda thought that ELP had a bit more class and standards than that, and that the album cover was not likely something that they wanted to see or do, but I think they knew they were not deceiving anyone, specially with the Karn Evil cover being so blatant with the work of that one artist. And the sun of a gun could not use the great stuff on Alien ... oh well!!!

All in all, that is one reason why so much of that stuff went out of my enjoyment as so much of the new stuff was not exactly about the music anymore. And I think that this hurt ELP more than anything else! but I wonder if they knew they had "done it" and were not willing to try and re-invent the wheel again, perhaps.

You may want, then, to rename the album to Luv Bitch

But this has been done before

Other than that, I don't know how strong the correlation really is. It'd be interesting to rate some albums and also rate the album covers to see if there's any relation. There's definitely some ugly-ass album covers among my favorite albums (Paranoid, anyone?).

I definitely like when bands have a strong visual identity, but most won't get to the level of something like Pink Floyd or Yes. And even then, Yes have just used generic Roger Dean artwork for their more recent albums. Even Drama, as much as I like that cover, seems pretty generic to me compared to 1971-1974 Yes covers. Ozric Tentacles and Zappa generally had a pretty good identity as well, and black midi so far have managed to create some memorable and consistent album covers that perfectly fit the music too.

But I think in that regard, a special shout-out to King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard is in order. All their album covers have been done by Jason Galea, but they all feel very diverse, and use different types of art or sculptures. Recently a friend even expressed surprise that they were all done by the same guy because they're so varied. And yet, they all feel very KGLW and consistent with each other. This extends to their tour posters and merch as well, which often feature original artwork. On top of that, it just looks fantastic.

Indeed, as an early teen with no older brother or sister to guide me a bit so I +/- had to go "blindly" at it, once I started to know what I like (pun intended) , cool artworks were one of the hints as to where to start in a band. 

For ex, the first Wishbone I went for was Argus, Stackridge's debut, Magma's Kontarkhoz, Gong's You, etc...

My very first or second album bought (the other being Harmonium's debut), Supertramp's COTC was a direct eye-catcher. From the artwork, I just knew I wanted to hear the album and all chances were that I would love it.  

Of course, the other important hints were: 

instruments played & line-ups

number of tracks and lengths. 

It's never easy to understand one of your post, but if you read about the band (I read Emo's book), all three were very much sex addicts (in the early stages of PA, our member 3Fates told us how much wad she swallowed from Greg while touring with them) and I can't remember how many times Emo caught the clap  in his autobiography.

Hi,

Updated ... still looking to get that Emerson book. Although I don't like to point fingers in that direction, because there wasn't a single band that did not engage in all the "free" this and that. Maybe Robert Fripp was the only virgin during that time, no?

So, what can we guess about the music of an album when looking at the artwork?

I think that we often can for instance tell how experimenting or mainstream/Pop-influenced it is and maybe even guess 

the genre/style; whether it's dark or light-moodied, melodic or dissonant, hard-edged or more soft, cold and maybe 

anxious (blue colour) or warm (orange, yellow), and whether it's more in classic/retro style or modern.

What else can we guess of that kind?

Concerning the artwork of Tarkus, I can tell that the music seems to me somehow militaristic, and the artwork reflects that.

Btw, I find the music to be really great, even it took me many years to get really into it.

Voivod's drummer, Michel Langevin, has made a very fine artwork depicting some hard-edged, dissonant, dark, cold, 

anxious and yet partly melodic music:

It seems a bit trickier with modern albums. I love Anathema - Weather Systems but the artwork is bit of a miss for me. Big Big Train put out great albums but I struggle to think of anything although I do like the bird motif they use on a couple of albums.

^ Right--   Led Zeppelin ll  works, And Then There Were Three  not so much, both fairly ugly but both housing good music.

As much as I hate to admit it, a good cover (and even a strange one) makes me enjoy an album more. Whereas a bad (or cliché) cover ruins part of the enjoyment. 

This has some Acquiring the Taste vibes.

Progressive Rock used in the 1970s quite a bit of surrealistic imagery to depict the experimenting character of the music:

Hi,

Perhaps, however from the arts side of things, from literature, theater and film, it was much less "surrealistic", than it was imaginary, and in many cases contrary to general thought, with some of the albums, and artists being decidedly political or at least quite socially aware and strong against the government. It's awfully difficult to say that ITCOTKC is not an album of political/social relevance, although the poetic nature with which it was done, had a tendency to hide a lot of the thoughts and ideas.

The covers, for my tastes, were not quite surrealist, as much as they were generally very much an obvious counter social element and view, and this is quite visible in a lot of HIPGNOSIS covers, even if subtle, although it is hard to not consider QUATERMASS' cover surrealistic, or many others, but in general I think that Storm and Roger (Dean) were less worried about their surrealism than they were upon using their graphical surfaces differently, with Roger leaning towards a futuristic and sci-fi view and look, which is quite open and visible in the first book that he did. And Storm T. explains a lot of the graphics in the two big books on the work by Hipgnosis ... in many ways, that made things more "experimental" than they did "surrealistic".

As an art form, this was a very special period for the art ... and so much of the music that went with it ... the sad thing that 30 years later, no one cared about the art anymore, and it was no longer visible, or clear and too many bands were depending on idealistic thoughts that were in their lyrics, which were not what was needed ... I call it a sort of early "trumpism", trying to convince you of what is right, and all that.

For me, in later days, it was no longer about the art, and most music showed it with its commercial copycopycopycopy and stylestylestylestyle and formatformatformatformat ... which pretty much told you that these folks were not connected to a time and space where art as valuable and important. It kinda also suggests to you what kind of art is in NY, London and Paris, when what comes out of their places are crap music, that is thought to be famous, because if you sell 100k in NY, you will be "famous", a suggestion that the actual artistic community is non-existent and decimated by commerciality!

I used to buy any LP I saw that had a Roger Dean cover!  Nearly all of them were good, if not great, music (Tony Kaye's "One Live Badger" being my favorite cover art), but I felt burned by Greenslade!  I should give it another listen.  

Other prog art tended to be a mess....I'm thinking of the Hipgnosis LP cover for "Out of our Hands" by Flash!  Ugh!  Also any LP featuring a man's naked bum!!  

Tull's "Thick as a Brick" was one of the most original IMHO. 

I can understand that, as Bedside Manners is one of the albums where I can't get the artwork to fit the music - but I like that artwork a lot and am also fond of the music.

Certainly you can't be that insecure and feel threatened in your manhood to be afraid of GFTO or Hemispheres, aren't you??

Both are great artworks, with male nudity symbolizing humanity  in general (like Da Vinci's thingie).

TAAB is a maqsterpice artwork.

Yeah fairly disappointed by Greenslade as well. Not only are Dean's illustrations not very good (Bedside is OK, but the debut is urghhh), but then again I never thought that the band's music was all that good.

I had managed to filla C90 cassette side (45 mins) out of their four historic albums, but for the CDr compilation, I had to resort to the live album and Greenslade's solo albums to fill a whole 80 mins.

.

Hi,

So much for him listening to Guru Guru! Mani is a nudist and makes no fuss about it, and it probably goes back to the famous/infamous commune days in Germany!

Greenslade is an acquired taste, since describing their music is difficult at times, but the work is neat and special in its own way, and remember that one of the guys here ended up producing a lot of very nice albums, which kinda makes you wonder ... why is Greenslade so different?

I don't dislike Flash at all, it is simply something else, perhaps without the ability to do something with more "meat" in it, than simply sound, but its early material, like the other band Badger, really showed how YES came about in the first place, but they did not, at the time, really had a keyboard player that could help "expand" the band's material, which Rick Wakeman did by adding a more classical element to it.

The artwork for both Badger, and Flash were likely very different for a good reason ... I had a feeling they did not want the "meaningful" covers that Hipgnosis was creating and then putting out something blatant, like Flash's first 2 albums, so they could (hopefully) show that the music was the important part, however, they did not stand up as well as the main band YES did. However, these covers were a good 6 months ahead of the real start of Roger Dean with "Fragile", thus, the covers might have been, at the time, not quite as well defined as they later became. I have to recheck on this ....

It's a tough conclusion, either way you look at it, and Flash's first two albums were not exactly the along the lines of the work that Hipgnosis did, but they managed to do something that got everyone's attention, which was good for the band, but I'm not sure that the music itself was as "attractive" (sorry ladies!) as the covers made the whole thing out to be ... and perhaps that might have been intentional, as illusory, that "attention" to something, might not necessarily indicate the whole story or idea. Sadly, Flash could never get "better" and I think them not wanting keyboards was a bit of a problem, when compared to the time and most English bands that were becoming keyboard heavy. All of a sudden, it was easy to feel that their material was not quite good enough. The same fate took place with other bands that were not quite keyboard oriented, and Budgie was one, and in the continent, Guru Guru for sure. The Edgar Broughton Band, had the same problem until later, but by then no one was listening to a very well educated, and intelligent band.

In general, trios were a problem musically, in the very early days, until Rush seemed to find a way around it some.

nice to hear that

Not at all, I just don't care to have it waved in my face!!  Neither represents good art in my opinion.  

Rush was sometimes a bit fem.  But heck, so was Zep... at least to the fem/macho extent where Plant's penis in TSRtS was enough already .

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fphotos.com%2Ffeatured%2Fphoto-of-robert-plant-and-led-zeppelin-david-redfern.html&psig=AOvVaw0FnENQ6lVlGWiHys8Lp6Sz&ust=1683513920114000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CBAQjRxqFwoTCJje0ZuY4v4CFQAAAAAdAAAAABAd" rel="nofollow">

LOL!!  I saw them onstage in Chicago, July 6th, 1973...."Houses of the Holy" tour.  A wonderful show! 

I've played onstage in many bands, first rule of stage performance = no underwear. 

That being said, I still don't care much for male bums being thrust into my face!   Just my preference.  There is more bad LP cover art out there than superb art. 

Well leave it to Pedro/Mosh to think of Guru's Hinten "artwork" when it comes to male arses. That's indeed "in your face" and it's not particularly nice buts either.

===================

As I said, in both cases, we can view the naked man in both artworks as a metaphor to humanity

Personally, while not thinking that GFTO is that good an album (take away Awaken, it's mediocre), I tend to think of Hipgnosis's near Sci-Fi artwork stunning (it's an excellent triple fold too), and the inside fold is also superb (with those lines recalled in the corner). I wish my male buttocks were that perfect too.

As for Hemispheres, one can wonder about the "odd posturing" attitude of the naked model (not his nudity).

In neither cases are the buttocks "waved in your faces", IMHO.... especially not in Hemispheres, where they're relagated to the corner, when seeing the unfolded artwork.

Androgyny, the possession of both masculine and feminine characteristics, was a part of the hippie counterculture, and it became in more figurative meaning and important ways a part of Progressive Rock music and the whole culture, which can be seen in artwork too.

Yeah, this one hasn't been easy for me to deal with, either, and when I first got it on LP, I did quite a lot to make the artwork look differently on the whole gatefold. Finally, I gave it up, and got a CD of it instead with quite different artwork, and I still coloured the last ass on the front "cover" with a pencil to cover it. 

Sean Trane wrote: ... Well leave it to Pedro/Mosh to think of Guru's Hinten "artwork" when it comes to male arses. That's indeed "in your face" and it's not particularly nice buts either. ...

Hi,

I guess I do not consider "nudity" offensive. What I consider offensive is the various conflicts around the world, where people are being killed indiscriminately, and we seem to think that it is OK for various this and that to kill and bomb left and right, and then we think that some nudity is wrong, and ugly.

Or we could take this much further and mention the artist that was known to piss on some of his works while painting, and still got a million for it!

Art, from what I can see, has always been about being in your face, since there is no other way to break through the barriers of "knowledge" or "education" or (in today's terms) commerciality!

It's a fine line, sometimes, but I find some of the reactions here ... rather ... strange, and not on par with art and its history ... geee ... I guess one or two statues naked (and very famous!) are not "ugly" as we make these out to be. Maybe some women find David's p_____ attractive, so no one else says anything about it, when it is very obvious the church wanted to place a lesser emphasis on the physical side of it on sex.

In this case, I think that Mani was mad that folks were not exactly paying attention to the music and he decided that it didn't matter what anyone thought, and he went out and proved himself correct ... the music still stands up today.

Sometimes you have to do what you have to do to shut people up and get some well deserved attention. It may be ugly, or hairy, or whatever, but the point was made ... and we're talking about this like he could not make his point!

My reason has maybe no objection to Hinten's artwork, it's my aestethics and feelings that do. 

Indeed, I see it in Punk quite a bit as well.

For not to talk about Glam Rock. 

In Glam, much more than prog IMHO

And of course in the 80's electro-pop (Communards, Culture Club, Wham, etc...)

Not so sure about punk, though

David_D wrote: ... My reason has maybe no objection to Hinten's artwork, it's my aestethics and feelings that do.

Hi,

Put yourself in Mani's shoes, when they had put together material for 3 albums, and were playing it live, and it was some spectacular "space rock", done in a rock style that only Jimi had ever given us a hint of at that time. Ax's excursions on his guitar were exceptional and created some far out stuff that was appreciated in concert (and still is!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) but to release an album he had to make a statement, and like the Edgar Broughton Band's "meat" cover (a kind of satire on the Beatles, btw!!!), it had to show a side of the music and the personalities that made the music ... and ... I find this really silly ... we might as well tell Flea and his band that they are the crap because they have performed naked many times!

For me, aesthetics are nice to have a cup of tea with ... nothing more. Same with "ideas" and "concepts" that we tend to think they should rule the world. I guess you can call me an anarchist, though my words are mostly standing up for the artists and their work ... it matters not to me if LZ was showing off their this or that ... according to my girlfriend at the time LZ was very sensual and sexual ... but here we are, and all we can be commenting on is the crap from folks that really do not have a whole lot to say about the music anyway, because otherwise, there would be some appreciation around it.

I do not think that "nudity" in the rock context, is out of place, any more than I do a model student sitting in an art class. That we "sexualize" a lot of it, is another story ... and has less to do with the art itself, or the model and artist ... it has to do with the observer, the one who would not stand up for their own art and music, and sadly, instead, makes comments on it. Reminds me of one saying we find in schools ... those who "can't" teach, and those who can "are doing it".

Btw, Edward Macan's Rocking the Classics is a great read about the whole English Progressive Rock culture in the '70s.

This is how to do it:

?

My favourite example for brilliant artwork that fits extremely well the music on the album, or let's say some of the "idea" of the music.

And not so little about the hippie counterculture, which Macan sees as the basis of Progressive Rock.

I'd love to hear a bit more about it. 

And in a similar vein, the cover of "Escenes" by the Spanish band Gòtic does also fit the pastoral and Prog-Folk feel of the album

^ I agree very much concerning the both of them.

And the surreal landscape depicts well the more experimenting and complex character of the music, but I think of it as as much Symphonic as Folk.

Yes I agree, it is perhaps more Symphonic than Folk. Great album undoubtedly!

To me is very important. Ok the music goes first but when the art work and music is going hand in hand the extra plus is there. One example

Genesis  - Trick of the tail, perfect art work for me that is like glove on hand with the music and examples are many in prog music, so to me the relasion between music and art is essential.

  Since album covers became the starting point for our musical  adventures; like many of you mentioned; I would always study the covers while it played to understand their relationship with the band. So, sometimes you can judge a book by its cover.

  In the 1980's ( as I did in the psychedelic era ); I created posters and flyers for the various bands I was in and distributed these hand colored, spray painted graphics (30-90) a weekly. This type of lo-fi advertising really helped establish a band identity in Houston and got us a record deal in England.

  So, to wrap it up I'll leave you with this dada statement: Art is for arting; Fart is for farting! Do music,do art.

Very interesting this post of yours, Rik. 

Hi,

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have always liked HIPGNOSIS because for many years, their covers had a slight "editorial" as to what the music was about, and it fit ... I don't think it was just a frilly, fun thing, it was serious and a lot of it was thought out well, and they describe it in the couple of books, on Hipgnosis and the Album Cover book.

Since the 90's, I think the commercialization of music might have decided that more money would be made without all the fancy art ... and instead have a symbol, or something about the band for the cover, but in the end, the "art" in many of them was ... a sort of Andi Warhol ... so what? Like you get excited about a can of soup, or a picture of dearest Marilyn! It wasn't "art" per se ... it was a "show" a lot more, and I think that too many of us "fans" lost sight of the art in it all, and became more enthused by the BIG NUMBERS that they were putting out and many websites started showing about many bands ... and the end result is that the state of the art, these days, is almost ... no art at all, since many folks are now doing far out covers for music that has little if any originality that matched the art itself. This might have happened 50 years ago, but I think that the desire was to make sure that the artistic design and thought about the cover matched the work of the band. And by the time that 10CC's members work with Hipgnosis, it becomes insane and amazing, and technologically challenging.

I do not see a whole lot of covers these days, that are a good indication of the music, and even the latest YES cover is weak, as if different colors were making a show about the band again ... and the nature of the music ... just songs ... did not necessarily match the images that the covers showed in my book.

I like to think that we lost our "father" (as it is said), in that we don't know what is right or wrong, or fits with this or that ... and that too many things are just thrown together as if to suggest there is a meaning there, only to find in the music and lyrics ... not much ... just another copy!

I think a lot of this is an issue with people not having any idea or relationship to the arts, at all ... they were brought up in a time of corporations and money, and art was never important and in fact, a lot of it is laughed at and disregarded, as if there was nothing for us to learn from it whatsoever ... and unless you are a well tuned person, I sincerely doubt your music will be attuned to an artistic concept and design at all ... because it is not your interest ... you're more focused on the riff or the song. Not the art it can have!

the cover artwork has always played a big role in a musical work. But we shouldn't judge the quality of the music by the quality of the cover art. Many people do it and it's a big mistake, in my opinion...

...

HI,

Yes, no and maybe. It depends on it all and what the band wants to do ... and not just have a nice picture on the cover. Sometimes, the work you do just "asks" for a nice painting or picture that pretty much shows a lot of what your work is about, although expanding beyond that would be a bit off the track sometimes.

This is the reason why so many covers by HIPGNOSIS were valuable ... they DID SPEAK a lot more about the music than otherwise, even if it was subtle, and fun. But it did speak a lot for the quality and ability of the bands in question, and few of their covers enter the realm of ... just weird, or senseless, and many of them deserve their listing in THE ALBUM COVER BOOK, and then in the HIPGNOSIS book of covers, where they even explain a lot of things. 

It makes a huge difference, but I wonder, sometimes, how many of the bands that were already established, did not think that some of the work was as good or valuable, as the picture makes it out to be.

Art is not an idea ... it is about who you are, and what you do, so a picture, or painting, or something like it, would not be an issue ... it's an extension of what you do, and there is no reason for it to not be there. Where it gets cloudy is when ... ohh let's do this to make it look cool, like so many covers ... and that might have a lot to do with the "band", but likely considerably less with the music and work itself.

The relationship is important, and it really shows how you want to conduct yourself ... a painting that is pretty much like you are, will not detract from the work itself ... unless you decide that make up is more important to your face! 

  Many people do it 

I don't think so. What's your evidence?

  Many people do it 

When Forbidden Myth's first album released, a site made a review. The reviewer wrote that the cover was designed by amateur and this made him to believe that the musical content would be the same...

One of the best Greek metal producer told me that for many people, the artwork is very important to buy an album...

UnderGround wrote: "But we shouldn't judge the quality of the music by the quality of the cover art."

With many thousands of albums available and when it's only possible to listen to a small part of them, the cover art is to me one of 

the important guidelines to whether give it a try.

I understand what you mean and you are right, but we do not judge the music/songs of an album from a good or bad artwork...

  Many people do it 

OK, it's probably true that the decision of some people to buy/listen to an album in the first place may depend on the cover. In fact when I was younger and it wasn't so easy to check out music before buying, I bought a few albums mainly because I liked the cover (only if they were really cheap though).

What I don't believe is that once somebody has listened to the music, they will still downrate it if they don't like the cover. I mean these are people who are supposed to be interested in the music, which comes to you through the ears not eyes...

Many times when I want to listen a new song from YouTube, I do not watch the screen but only listen to the music...

I suspect that a video on youtube will dominate the album artwork more than the music.

Anyway, it'd probably be naive to think that only the music counts and the visuals don't play a role at all. However I think the more somebody is properly into music, the less the visuals will influence their appreciation of the music. Of course if your first interest is fashion or cinema or fantasy/SF it may be different.

 

 

 

Most people use spotify or connect something similar to a set of speakers these days. YT is also common, but a lot of albums are just the album art and nothing else. Oftentimes when friends are having music on I have no clue what we're listening to because there's no screen on anywhere, and there's no CD or LP sleeve lying around. Nobody really listens to music via MTV or whatever either these days, so in a way we're in the least visual era of music in a while.

I will say that I do often not look at a video if a song has one on YT. I prefer to make up my own imagery and if I watch a videoclip after I'm already familiar with a song, it never really matches my own idea of the song. That black midi clip is great, though, and part of the reason I got into them, I think.

I am still listening from cds, vinyls and my old cassettes.

Also from youtube, bandcamp etc.

I am not using streaming platforms like apple, spotify etc.

As a musician i never use these platforms to sell my music because streaming has almost no profit for musicians.

If i want to support an artist, i listen to his music on youtube or bandcamp and i am trying to find where can i byy(physical or digital)...

Just realized i got off topic...

I guess my specific question has already been answered as well as it was possible. 

 

I believe it. I had noticed that there are multiple copies of the dancers in the video.

 

 

There have been albums that I've gotten largely because of the artwork. Three that come to mind are:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tjah, it looks to me that most of the high-rated albums have artwork of particularly good quality.

 

 

 

(I'm listening to the album right now)

Reading the TAAB cover was an integral experience while listening to the music (right down to finishing the lewd connect-the-dots or the crossword puzzle). One informed the other more so than just about any other album.