![]() ![]() Luckily, the monster is about to meet his match in the form of a flaxen-haired hero who rides a flying motorcycle and clutches a ball of light. The cover image, created by the sci-fi/fantasy illustrator Michael Whelan, features a gigantic bat perched atop the Chrysler Building holding an innocent Valkyrie hostage. It’s much more American than apple pie it’s as American as Oreos. Like a well-salted homemade foodstuff, the album leaves listeners feeling exhausted, oddly greasy and craving a glass of water. Guitars scream, pianos whirl and Meat Loaf howls throughout his sixth album, “Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell,” which consists almost entirely of neo-Wagnerian ballads that reach for all the highs of popular music while stubbornly refusing any of the lows. To love Meat Loaf - the food or the recording artist - is to embrace maximalism. Meat Loaf: Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell (1993) The hand pictured could belong to Yule, as if, against all odds, he has taken hold of the band - and he isn’t letting go. No longer an emanation from “underground,” “Squeeze” announces itself as a beacon from the heavens, grabbing New York City by the neck, i.e., the Empire State Building. Symbolically, though, the imagery could not be any more different. The illustration is similar, stylistically, to the cover of the Velvets’ 1970 album, “ Loaded,” which depicted pink smoke emanating from a New York City subway stairwell. One high point of “Squeeze” is the album cover. Unlike the canonical Velvet Underground albums, this one is largely free of conflict, irony or venom, as if someone had squeezed the life out of the band. The resulting work, “Squeeze,” found little commercial or critical success. Although it was released under the legendary imprimatur of the Velvet Underground, it only features one member of the actual group: Doug Yule, a multi-instrumentalist who didn’t join the group until after the release of their second album. “Squeeze” is a footnote in the annals of music history. A bit saccharine, perhaps, but it hits the spot on a bright summer day. Overall, the sunny utopianism of this album cover perfectly matches the wistful pop music inside. The aerial point of view highlights umbrellas and other indications of domestic life on the roof terraces, making the cover more of a mise- en-scènethan an architectural portrait. The photograph of Habitat 67 the indie pop band Stars selected for the cover of their 2012 album “The North” is washed out and saturated to create a nostalgic, technicolor effect, which differs in important ways from how the raw concrete of Safdie’s building appears in person. Like a great musician, Safdie creates a sense of liveliness and vitality within a framework built on repetition. In one way, Habitat 67 represents an attempt to use principles of musical composition in architectural design. When it was unveiled at Expo 67 in Montreal, Safdie’s arrangement of 354 identical prefabricated concrete housing units presented a challenging and original vision for the future of urban living. Regular readers of Architizer know how much we love Moshe Safdie’s Habitat 67 housing complex. Spotify users: click here to listen to the full playlist! This is far from a complete list, so please share your own examples in the comments. What follows are just 15 examples of memorable album covers featuring architecture. ![]() When this is pulled off effectively, music and architecture can speak to each other in intriguing ways.Īs we put together this list, we did a good amount of dancing about architecture, or at least tapping our feet while considering the subtle, sometimes ingenious ways musicians have played with architectural iconography over the years. In cases when architecture finds its way onto an album cover, these buildings also get bound up with the music. While a sleeve design cannot really tell you what the music inside sounds like, it can become a part of the total work, bringing a visual component to the listening experience. What is expressed in one medium, the logic goes, you cannot translate into another.Īlbum art presents an interesting challenge to Costello’s formalist maxim. Architects: Showcase your next project through Architizer and sign up for our inspirational newsletter.Ī popular saying, widely but not definitively attributed to Elvis Costello, holds that “writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” In addition to skewering music critics - a perennial punching bag - this joke asserts the ultimate integrity of each individual art form. ![]()
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