A New Decade: Iconic album art from the Britpop era

Ok, let’s be brief here. This is now the…….3^rd damn time I’ve written this introduction up, and it time it’s ballooned out to about 300 words of nostalgic waffling, tip-toeing around self indulgent dickery. Bottom line here: there were some great albums of the Britpop era between 1994-98, (If we want to be brutally streamlined here) and the covers that have graced them have become almost as memorable as the music inside. Here’s five of my favourites, with a little bit of history and a touch of analysis for extra poops and giggles.

Blur – Parklife (1994)

Returning from a disastrous North American tour in promotion of their poorly-received Modern Life Is Rubbish, Damon Albarn and co. rekindled their relationship with British music, life and culture. As a result, Parklife is a glorious mélange of punk, dance beats, symphonic pop and more with subjects ranging from suburban mundanity to shifting sexual identities. The album cover – the British tradition of greyhound racing coupled with an unassuming title and band logo – could be seen as either a readerly or writerly text. You could very much take it on face value – a picture of two dogs and a title – but a slight knowledge of the band and their attitude towards Britain would reveal the peculiar contradictions of the album: where these well-educated, middle-class young men embracing their traditions or patronizing their heritage?

Oasis - Definitely Maybe (1994)

Now, this was a band that aimed for the spectacular from the beginning. Within seconds of this album starting, you’re subjected to walls upon layers of thunderous guitars and anthemic choruses sung by mono-browed dole bludger that was more than convinced that he was the greatest singer of all time. Whether you believed them or not, they WANTED you to KNOW that they knew their music, as their album cover was littered with references and cheeky asides. There’s pictures of Burt Bacharach and Manchester United footballer George Best littered around the room, the TV shows a scene from The Good The Bad & The Ugly, and each band member is present but not facing the camera. This is a group who wanted their faces to be known. This may actually me the most obvious readerly text of the whole bunch, one that makes grabs at authenticity and a CCCS example of spectacular deviance.

Portishead - Dummy (1994)

A polar opposite from the wide eyed optimism of the guitar-rock bands that were exploding, this Bristol trio wrote an album as lush and warm as it was dark and discomforting, cementing their hometown as the land of trip-hop. As for the album cover…well, if you asked me to describe it to you, I could give it a shot but only get as far as “there’s a fat chick…kinda”. A much more stark and minimalist approach to a front cover, unlike Definitely Maybe there were no band members pictured. And being a debut album, you couldn’t draw many contextual conclusions like you could with Parklife. The heavy use of blue may have been an attempt to enter the trip hop scene, but that sounds a little lame.

The Verve - A Northern Soul (1995)

Taking my blog title from this albums soaring opener, the cover is almost reminiscent of the classic portrait shot a la The Beatles 2^nd proper album With The Beatles, with the evocative addition of a silhouette figure in an open door. Putting the door closest to Richard Ashcroft, the principal songwriter at the time, may be inconsequential, but the door itself begs the reader to look for meaning. Is someone entering or exiting the door? Is it a slightly smarmy metaphor for new beginnings, or is saying something about the bands increasing use of drugs (both hallucinogenic and amphetamines). Regardless, one only needs to compare this cover to their final album (Urban Hymns) to understand the deteriorating relationships in the band. But they’ve reformed now. Gleeeeeeee


Pulp - Different Class (1995)

For another band that initially shied away from the Britpop tag (particularly because they’d been around in some form since the early 80s) but eventually became one of it’s biggest stars, we have Pulp and their biggest album, simultaneously their most clear embrace and condemnation of British class culture. You want a mid-90s analysis of class in Britain? You ask Jarvis Cocker, he shits all over Anthony Giddens. The wedding photo album cover, appearing to be in the 70s theme with bandmembers appearing as interspersed cardboard cutouts, is in stark contrast to the kaleidoscopic music contained inside. As Sorted For E’s & Wizz so eloquently asked about the idolizing of a new age, combined with the stupidity of commercial culture “Is this the way they say the future’s meant to feel? Or just 20,000 people standing in a field?”

Perhaps album packaging, with the increased use of digital music downloads, will go the way of the vinyl record: a new superior (seemingly only superior at the moment in terms of portability and possibly affordability, certainly not sound quality) product becomes increasingly adopted, so the former product becomes more of a boutique, luxury item (Jones and Sorger). As a believer of music as an audio-visual experience, this is a harsh reality to face.

But some people aren't as pessimistic as me, thankfully. Anthony Bruno, an arts and technology writer for Reuters wrote a positive analysis of digital album packaging at the beginning of 2008, detailing a couple of informed suggestions he had to include album art, liner notes, lyrics and special features into a download folder. In some examples, they would merely be reproductions of physical albums, in others they would actually be superior products (not unlike extras on DVDs), and it's rewarding to note that some larger legal download sites have started including these new features into some big name products. Time will tell if this will trickle down to the majority of releases, or just whatever new hot tripe Rihanna or Timbaland puts out.

For a more optimistic review of album art, with examples of bands still putting much love into packaging (the Spiritualised album is a particular thing of beauty), check out http://sleevage.com/