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What's your favourite album cover artwork?

What's your favorite album cover artwork?

  • Got to Be There

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Ben

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Music & Me

    Votes: 2 5.1%

  • Forever, Michael

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Off the Wall

    Votes: 1 2.6%

  • Thriller

    Votes: 3 7.7%

  • Bad

    Votes: 4 10.3%

  • Dangerous

    Votes: 23 59.0%

  • HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I

    Votes: 3 7.7%

  • Invincible

    Votes: 3 7.7%
  • Total voters
    39
R1chard

R1chard

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Forget the actual music. Which is the best cover to a studio album? Criteria can be anything: best concept, best execution, best vibe, most original, etc.
 
Thriller 2001 SE card sleeve cover

4f2653a9a17342f8a67e6d034371a446.jpg
 
MJ holding a guitar of course! (So rock'n'roll!)


But also... maybe ... Dangerous.
 
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Got to Be There, Thriller and Off the Wall are the only ones I would consider good. Nothing about them makes you think of MJ's troubled life and they're each memorable in their right. The beret on Got to Be There, the tux on Off the Wall, and the suit on Thriller. You can argue they're just generic album covers of their respective eras, but at least they're more memorable than the other Motown albums.

Bad's cover represents MJ becoming "weird". Anyone would understandably be baffled by how different he looks compared to Thriller.

Dangerous just represents MJ becoming a secluded recluse, although it's still a nice painting.

History is too self-gratifying. To make a statue of himself so soon after 1993 reeked of insecurity.

Invincible is just bland. But at least it came in different colors XD
 
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Spaceship said:
It's basically, "Welcome to the World of Michael Jackson". It feels like you're stepping into another world because how bizarre MJ seemed to be at this time.

It's not a bad cover, but I prefer the days when MJ seemed normal.
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I loved and still love the Dangerous cover. I was mesmerized by the original painting, that was on display at the exhibition 'Michael Jackson – On the wall'. It was intriguing to me... there was so much to see, and so many interpretations to think of... I liked it way more than a 'normal' picture of Michael.
 
Spaceship said:
It's basically, "Welcome to the World of Michael Jackson". It feels like you're stepping into another world because how bizarre MJ seemed to be at this time.
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And yet he didn't seem bizarre to me at all. Perhaps it's true to say that no global superstar can ever be 'normal' the way everyone else is but ... bizarre? That's not what I saw.

Spaceship said:
It's not a bad cover, but I prefer the days when MJ seemed normal.
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He was famous from the age of 11 and then stratospherically famous from 1983 onwards. So, yeah, he wasn't like the rest of us. 🤷🏽‍♀️

Spaceship said:
[...] Dangerous just represents MJ becoming a secluded recluse, although it's still a nice painting. [...]
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When did that happen? I must have missed that bit of Michael's life while I was waiting for the kettle to boil. Sure, he sometimes avoided his family but when was he ever a recluse? He kept a low profile when he was in Ireland but he socialised with Paddy Dunning's family and was in the studio with will.i.am. There's not one decade of his life when he was a recluse, imo. 🤨
 
Spaceship said:
It's basically, "Welcome to the World of Michael Jackson". It feels like you're stepping into another world because how bizarre MJ seemed to be at this time.
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Dangerous was one of the most powerful eras because it carried a powerful message of unity, and love really was his message then. Love and healing. M had a visionary mindset and determined to stand out from the rest. He achieved that goal.
Spaceship said:
It's not a bad cover, but I prefer the days when MJ seemed normal.
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Personally, M working with Mark Ryden excited me , I feel Dangerous as 'Dynamic artistry,' (and thinking !). Ryan and M were an effective force and I wish I could have seen more of that duo of minds. Dangerous is a delight to have in a collection visually be it on physical media or social media.. and it seems that's what we want. (most of the voters here)
 
Fuzball said:
I wish the initial concept for Bad was kept.

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I feel the same way. I LOVE this as cover art. I was just thinking recently how I wonder if the actual contents of the album would have changed in any way based on the album cover. Like, were any songs removed from the tracklist (even if just in Michael's mind) when this idea wa scrapped?

Anyway, I'm in love with this photo.
 
@Spaceship I'm really surprised by some of your takes. For example, I love the cover of Got to Be There and it is probably my favorite of Michael's solo Motown covers. But what makes it objectively better than Ben, for example? I'm just surprised by the phrasing that the album covers you listed are "the only ones I would consider good" rather than simply "these are my favorites." It's perfectly fine to like some more than others, but that doesn't mean the others by default aren't good.

I definitely love the covers to OTW and Thriller... I love OTW because I love Michael's smile, the tux, the brick wall, all of it. It's a weirdly bad ass cover, for being so charming. A kind of innocent swagger. I'm not sure how else to put it. Either way, I love it. Thriller I love because it's Thriller and because it' a photo of Michael and, I mean... of course. Plus I love the darkness around him and the serious look on his face, as opposed OTW. It's a cool contrast.

But you lose me with your takes on some of the others, even if I don't necessarily disagree with your dislike of them.

For example, Bad to me is not Michael's best cover. I do genuinely love it, because I love the aesthetics of the Bad era and I think he looks amazing, just as he does on the previous two covers. My only real issue with it is that it's kind of simple. Not really any more simple than Thriller, but because he took so much artistic control with this album, I wish we saw something a little bit more exciting, and artful, like the original concept for the album cover. I also think that by only having Michael with a white backdrop, it does sort of serve to emphasize the change in his appearance. To be honest, I don't see why this is a problem, though. He was adopting a look and aesthetic for the era. It makes sense in some ways to put it front and center, perhaps to purposely cause some controversy, as most artist's like to do. I just think it would have been more exciting artistically to represent that change with a more unique stylistic choice.

Spaceship said:
History is too self-gratifying. To make a statue of himself so soon after 1993 reeked of insecurity.
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Well, I also am not a fan of the HIStory cover, but for different reasons. I just don't really like the aesthetic of a statue being the cover. I would have preferred to see a Dangerous style cover that has an amalgamation of historical images that relate, in some way, to the energy of the album's contents. For me the current cover is just, again, a little too simple for what is actually happening musically.

Spaceship said:
Dangerous just represents MJ becoming a secluded recluse, although it's still a nice painting.
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As for Dangerous...

What can I say? I appreciate that you like the painting itself, but your point about it representing him being a recluse, or making him or his world seem "bizarre" legitimately shocks me. I mean, truly. I understand if FOR YOU it represents that because it reminds you of how the world was perceiving him at the time. But the Dangerous cover is an artistic masterpiece. Not only because of it's beauty and intricacy and all the stories it tells, but because in my opinion it is probably the only album cover that really represents the depth and complexity of Michael's work.

One of my biggest pet peeves is that Michael is sometimes relegated to simply being a "pop star" (by the general public) and not often enough treated as the genius he was. I think this stems mostly from jealousy and people wanting to find reasons to dismiss someone who was so obscenely talented and successful. But it's definitely a real problem. This might be more noticeable to me, or bother me more because prior to becoming a fan a few years ago it is what I assumed about him. I am not a fan of pop music in general, so I sort of brushed Michael off for that reason. I didn't disrespect him by any means, I just assumed he didn't write any of his own music, didn't perform live, etc. But once I actually listened to him, watched him, and learned about him I was blown TF away at every turn. Most of his covers align more with a pop image, which is perfectly fine, of course. As I said, I love those covers. But Dangerous is the first cover that feels completely about the artistry and less about the image. It challenges us, asks us questions, stokes our imaginations. It forces us to look deeper, to analyze what is there, to think twice about our perception of him, his music, and life. If anything, I think the Dangerous cover elevates him because it leans so heavily into the abstract, the whimsical, the dark, the strange. It is mystifying in a way that represents the true depth of Michael's work. It actually honors and enhances the experience of the work in a way only truly phenomenal album covers can.

You are of course welcome to dislike it as a cover, but your reasoning just makes me a little sad. That said, I do sometimes avoid footage of the 90s, or listen less to his later music, not because I dislike it in any way, but because it just reminds me of the sadness I feel about what he was going through. It can be fun to focus more on the space and time when Michael was just widely beloved without much controversy. I like to remember the times when he wasn't in as much pain and wasn't so attacked. So I do understand that being part of this, too.
 
staywild23 said:
Well, I also am not a fan of the HIStory cover, but for different reasons. I just don't really like the aesthetic of a statue being the cover. I would have preferred to see a Dangerous style cover that has an amalgamation of historical images that relate, in some way, to the energy of the album's contents. For me the current cover is just, again, a little too simple for what is actually happening musically.
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I do like the colour scheme of HIStory, including the back cover and also the booklet. I tend to forget about the statue, like it's just a picture of the artist.
And just as I started reading your paragraph, I had the same idea that a Dangerous-style turned towards history could have been a better choice.
staywild23 said:
(Dangerous) (...) it is probably the only album cover that really represents the depth and complexity of Michael's work.
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Agreed to, that what I like about it, the depth, the complexity. What disturbed me somehow is all the references to "numerology", as I don't think this can be taken seriously.

In a sense, the Michael cover also represents depth... not of Michael's work but of Michael's career I would bay.
 
Hot_Street said:
Has anyone thought about the secret that the Invincible cover holds? Why is Michael's right eye pixelated? What deeper spiritual meaning might this have?

https://www.reddit.com/r/ChainsawMan/comments/zdcbmx/is_there_some_kind_of_deeper_symbolism_with_the
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Maybe it's just to have parts of the pictures matching the random fonts for the artist name and album title.

Maybe just a trend because due to the web explosion, computer stuff were starting to become "cool".

Usually, how I see it is that most of this album gives me a "clinical" vibe compared to the other albums (not even sure how to describe it), a somewhat more electronic sound. And the cover matches this. Though, did the cover influence the way I perceive the album? Maybe.
 
staywild23 said:
@Spaceship I'm really surprised by some of your takes. For example, I love the cover of Got to Be There and it is probably my favorite of Michael's solo Motown covers. But what makes it objectively better than Ben, for example?
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I didn't say anything about objectivity.

Got to Be There's cover isn't anything amazing to me, but I found MJ's hat to be memorable. I can't think of anything memorable about Ben's cover when it's just a close-up of his face. They could have maybe added a rat to make it stand out more, but nah, rats are gross lol
staywild23 said:
I'm just surprised by the phrasing that the album covers you listed are "the only ones I would consider good" rather than simply "these are my favorites." It's perfectly fine to like some more than others, but that doesn't mean the others by default aren't good.
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"I would consider good" implies that I'm only expressing my opinion.
staywild23 said:
I also think that by only having Michael with a white backdrop, it does sort of serve to emphasize the change in his appearance. To be honest, I don't see why this is a problem, though. He was adopting a look and aesthetic for the era. It makes sense in some ways to put it front and center, perhaps to purposely cause some controversy, as most artist's like to do. I just think it would have been more exciting artistically to represent that change with a more unique stylistic choice.
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As a photograph, it's not bad.

But anyone was gonna be thrown off by how different MJ looked on it.
staywild23 said:
What can I say? I appreciate that you like the painting itself, but your point about it representing him being a recluse, or making him or his world seem "bizarre" legitimately shocks me. I mean, truly. I understand if FOR YOU it represents that because it reminds you of how the world was perceiving him at the time. But the Dangerous cover is an artistic masterpiece. Not only because of it's beauty and intricacy and all the stories it tells, but because in my opinion it is probably the only album cover that really represents the depth and complexity of Michael's work.
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The cover is meant to be tongue-in-cheek. America thinks MJ's crazy, so he's playing into that narrative with the cover (the amusement park, the animals, the kids, the title "Dangerous", etc). I don't have any real issue with it; I just prefer less wacky covers.
 
Spaceship said:
Like I said, it's a nice painting. But it just adds to the narrative of MJ being bizarre at the end of the day.
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That’s when you are looking at MJ from the media’s perspective.
Not from a fan. Not as an admirer of his art. You seem to have lost that point of view & look at him in an antagonistic way.

I‘d say the covers from OTW to Dangerous are all iconic, with huge recognizable worth.
And Dangerous is a great & extravagant piece of art.
 
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