Broadcast 28th June 2016. (Click on this link then find the section of the programme Updating Album Covers)
Over the last few
months, fans of Phil Collins fans have been spoilt. Not content with reissuing
all of his albums in shelf-taxing box sets, Collins has also chosen a unique
way of re-promoting them. 1980s ubiquities like Face Value, No Jacket Required
and Hello, I Must Be Going have all got new artwork.
Well, updated artwork to
be precise: Phil has reshot the front covers – covers, you’ll remember, which
featured young Collins’ visage close up and looking straight at you. Now we see the
current 65 year old, slightly desiccated Phil, looking, beady-eyed, straight at us. It’s a brave move. True,
it’s not as if he was a heart-fluttering Simon Le Bon or Sting back in the day,
but most artists of his age might think twice about showing their current blemished
selves so starkly.
Phil’s move is almost
unique in pop. Despite being a commercial product, obsessed with youth and
hipness, pop music is an old stick-the-mud when it comes to its packaging.
Think about it: you go in a shop to buy some Kellogs Corn Flakes: sure you’ll
find a row of boxes featuring some sort of cockerel and a Kellogs logo. The
logo hasn’t changed but everything else has. Compare it to last year’s box or a
box from the 80s and you’ll notice all sorts of rethinks – a font change here,
an image switch there.
OK, fair enough,
that’s just food. But what about comparable products like books or films? Every time
a book is republished it is seen as an opportunity to change the typeface and update
the imagery to appeal to a new demographic who haven’t yet read Ian Fleming, Graham
Green or Emily Bronte. Penguin have brought back their vintage 1950s and 60s
designs but crucially to sell merchadise not books. Likewise, when a old movie
is re-released in cinemas or on
BluRay the distributers are falling over themselves to maxmise the opportunity
to update the font, redesign the graphics and find striking new visuals which
will appeal to a new generation of moviegoers.
 |
| The fantastic original Saul Bass artwork for Hitchcock's Vertigo bastardised for the DVD re-release. Find this and other examples of how Saul Bass' design work has been changed on this excellent site http://annyas.com/saul-bass-movie-posters-then-now/ |
So why is pop music
different? If you walk into a record shop – and yes, they do still exist! –
it’s like walking into an art gallery gift shop full of nostalgic familiarity:
over there in the B section is the one with the four fellas on the zebra
crossing next to it is the one with the guy with his eyes
closed with the red lightning bolt over his face a little bit
along from that is the man smashing his bass guitar on stage and oh yeah, they’ve still got the one with the baby swimming underwater after
the cash.
All of these records
came out over 20 years ago. Lots of the artists involved are dead. Wouldn’t the
CDs be more successful if the packaging got updated every few years? There are
examples of this of course. David Bowie reclining in a dress on the sleeve to The
Man Who Sold The World got re-housed in a much more target market-driven Ziggy sleeve
after he became a household name. Grace Jones’ Warm Leatherette got a similar
treatment when the original, imposing Jean Paul Goude designed sleeve was
changed to a video still of the singer
after her worldwide success. But crucially, in recent re-releases both
of these changed sleeves have now reverted to the originals.
Imagine pop music
where it was just music packaged in whatever a record company thought the
market needed at the time. Imagine taking Dark Side of The Moon out of a light
brown sleeve with a picture of David Gilmour soloing on it, or listening to the
Sex Pistols debut whilst gazing a cover featuring child’s drawings, or buying
the Velvet Underground & Nico in a sleeve designed by Mark Rothko.
It wouldn’t be right
would it? Like Marmite and Lyle’s Golden Syrup, some packaging just shouldn’t
be changed. Some music on the other
hand…
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