Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly - S9E05 - Sound + Vision: Album Covers As Marketing, Part Two

Episode Date: January 30, 2020

This week, it’s Part Two of our Album Covers As Marketing episode. In the 1980’s, album covers shrunk down for the first time to accommodate CDs. And in the 2000s, the advent of iPods shrunk them again to the size of a postage stamp. Forcing album artwork to become highly creative. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly. As you may know, we've been producing a lot of bonus episodes while under the influences on hiatus. They're called the Beatleology Interviews, where I talk to people who knew the Beatles, work with them, love them, and the authors who write about them. Well, the Beatleology Interviews have become a hit, so we are spinning it out to be a standalone podcast series. You've already heard conversations with people like actors Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell, and Beatles confidant Astrid Kershaw. But coming up, I talk to May Pang, who dated John Lennon in the mid-70s. I talk to double fantasy guitarist Earl Slick, Apple Records creative director John Kosh. I'll be talking to Jan Hayworth,

who designed the Sgt. Pepper album cover. Very cool. And I'll talk to singer Dion, who is one of only five people still alive who were on the Sgt. Pepper cover. And two of those people were Beatles. The stories they tell are amazing. So thank you for making this series such a success. And please, do me a favor, follow the Beatleology interviews on your podcast app. You don't even have to be a huge Beatles fan, you just have to love storytelling.

Subscribe now, and don't miss a single beat. This is an apostrophe podcast production. Your teeth look whiter than noon, noon, noon. You're not you when you're hungry. You're a good hand with all things. You're under the influence with Terry O'Reilly. The title of the album was Ladies of the Canyon. It was Joni Mitchell's third album and it contained a song called Woodstock.

The song was written 24 hours after the famous music festival had ended. The lyrics spoke of the spiritual aspect of the gathering, about hundreds of thousands of people coming together in harmony to remember what was important in life. The song captured the absolute essence of Woodstock, which is interesting, because Joni Mitchell wasn't even there. Joni Mitchell missed out on Woodstock because her manager convinced her it would be a better career move to appear on the Dick Cavett TV show in New York. So, Joni watched the news stories about Woodstock on her hotel room TV and wrote the song based on what her then-boyfriend, Graham Nash, told her about the festival. His group,

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, performed at Woodstock, and remarkably, it was only the group's second time ever performing in public. A year later, the band would have a hit with Joni's song. David Crosby said Joni captured the essence of Woodstock better than anyone who was actually there. Joni Mitchell isn't just one of the major singer-songwriters in music history. She is also an accomplished album cover designer. She created the covers for 12 of her 19 studio albums. The cover of Ladies of the Canyon featured a self-portrait

with a view from the window of Joni's then Laurel Canyon home in California. Many of her covers were paintings, including the albums Court and Spark and Both Sides Now. Joni won two Grammy Awards for album design, one for Turbulent Indigo and another for Hijira. An album, Rolling Stone magazine ranks number five on the best album covers of all time list. Joni didn't just design her own albums. She also painted the cover for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's album So Far, which went to number one

on the Billboard chart. Designing album cover art was a way to keep both of Joni's passions going, music and art. As she says, she always considered herself a painter derailed by circumstance. Welcome to part two of our album covers as marketing episode.

When the 1980s arrived, album covers shrunk for the first time, as compact discs suddenly made cover art compact. Yet, many iconic covers were created in that small 5 by 5 inch format. When the digital era disrupted the music business, album art shrunk again, this time smaller than a postage stamp. But great cover art survived and thrived. Like Joni Mitchell, many artists these days now preside over their cover art and the marketing of their albums.

They're taking control of both sides now. You're under the influence. The Influence. On September 21st, 1984, the music industry changed forever. That was the day CBS opened its first American compact disc pressing plant in Terre Haute, Indiana. In other words, it was the day CDs made their way across the pond. The first commercial CD ever was released in Europe in 1982. It was by ABBA. But on this day in 1984

North America got its first taste of CD sound on a disc That would go on to sell 15 million copies Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA And it wasn't just the great music It was the cover art It made an unforgettable impression Even though it was in a small 5x5 inch format. The cover featured the bosses behind

in a white t-shirt and ripped jeans with a red baseball cap hanging out of his back pocket, standing in front of the American flag. It was shot by legendary photographer Annie Leibovitz, and it not only epitomized Springsteen himself, but his blue-collar Americana sound. Springsteen said they took a lot of different photos, but in the

end, the picture of his rear end looked better than the picture of his face. So that's what went on the cover. On the surface, the title track was an anthem, a symbol of American patriotism. It even punctuated elections on both sides of the aisle.

But in reality, the song was about the ways in which America fails veterans after they return home from war. That misinterpretation led to an ongoing debate about the album cover. Was Springsteen facing the flag because he was saluting it or, some wondered, was he urinating on it? The cover ignited conversations and sales. As record companies and recording artists

worried the shift to a dramatically smaller cover format might dampen sales, Born in the USA proved that even a 5x5-inch album cover could make a huge impact. Seven years later, another iconic album cover hit the shelves. The cover showed a naked baby swimming underwater in a pool,

reaching for a dollar bill hanging from a sharp fishing hook. The album was Nirvana's Nevermind. The image was controversial. It spoke to Kurt Cobain's fascination with embryos, hence why Nirvana's second album was called In Utero. Cobain's original idea for the Nevermind album art was a photo of an actual water birth, but it would be too graphic as a marketing vehicle. The concept of the dollar bill wasn't part of his original vision either, but rather the product of free association. The band threw out many ideas for the object at the end of the fishing line, including a burrito, a raw steak, and another CD. Until they landed on the dangling dollar bill. To find the perfect photographer, the band looked through what was called workbooks at the time.

Essentially, the photographer yellow pages. They found someone who actually specialized in, quote, submerged humans. He got the job. The name of the baby on the cover is Spencer Eldon. He was four months old at the time. Today, he's in his late 20s, and he has a Nevermind tattoo across his chest.

Eldon's picture would make its way into 30 million homes. It would become one of the most recognized album covers of all time, demonstrating yet again that cover art could still be iconic in a small format. It's been recreated endlessly, including by a 25-year-old Eldon and the Nirvana members themselves. The album cover also created a merchandising bonanza. The Swimming Baby graced clothing and accessories all over the world and continues to do so to this day,

proving that standout album art can generate revenue for years, sometimes even decades. The album spent 335 weeks on the Billboard 200, and interestingly, it was recently named one of the most streamed albums ever by Spotify, with 122 million global streams. That is the sweet another critical shift. We're no longer perusing record stores in search of eye-catching cover art. Today, we're relying heavily on social media. If you think about it, Instagram posts look like little albums or CDs,

first and foremost because they're square. And there are a few artists in particular that take full advantage of that fact, like Taylor Swift. In 2016, Swift and Kanye West found themselves in the center of a feud. West released a song called Famous, in which he took credit for Swift's fame in the center of a feud. West released a song called Famous in which he took credit for Swift's fame in the lyrics. Swift was outraged by the line. Shortly afterward, Kim Kardashian West

then posted a recording of an apparent phone call between West and Swift, allegedly discussing and agreeing to the lyrics beforehand. Kanye West's fans and the Kardashian clan alike then went after Swift online, calling her a snake. Swift took the unusual step of deleting the entire contents of her Instagram. Then, on February 21, 2017, Swift reappeared on Instagram and posted three videos of a snake slithering across a black background.

No caption, no context. Two days later, she posted another black square with the writing, quote, First single out tomorrow night, followed by her new album cover. The album was called Reputation. The cover art was black and white, a stark departure from Swift's previous five albums. It featured a photo of Swift, half covered by a series of newspapers

with her name splashed across the headlines. Leading up to the full album's release, Swift promoted her new record by continuing to populate her Instagram feed with a string of moody images, black and white with the odd splash of red. They were vague and mysterious, not only mimicking the look of her album cover, but the theme of the album itself. The lyrics across the 15 songs were a commentary on fame, feuds, haters, and, well, her reputation. Swift didn't do any other press for the album,

simply stating, quote, there will be no explanation, there will be just reputation. Reputation revealed a new facet of Swift the world had yet to see, and through the deletion of her previous Instagram posts, Swift was sending a message that a new Taylor was emerging. Tying in with this now famous lyric, The old Taylor can't come to the phone right now. Why? Because she's dead.

Which came from the song, Look What You Made Me Do. Nearly two years later to the day, Swift's Instagram feed changed drastically again. Suddenly, it took on a new theme. When she began posting hazy cotton candy-colored images, visions of pink stairwells, kittens, and turquoise nail polish, only to reveal her latest album, Lover. A lighter, more upbeat sound, Lover was all about love, including the single, You Need to Calm Down, dedicated to supporting the LGBTQ plus community.

While Swift releases actual album art, she treats her Instagram feed like a marketing campaign. The tone and feel of her album is present in every post, and she includes interesting little nuggets only true fans will catch along the way. For example, Swift posted a photo of a starry sky above a group of palm trees. Fans counted the stars and realized there were 61, which was the number of days until the release of her first single, Off Lover. Reputation soared to number one in 13 countries. Lover hit number one in 98 countries on the iTunes chart. Swift shows that in the digital era, album artwork can exist in more places than just the album itself.

The old Taylor may be dead, but the new Taylor is a master marketer. Typically, an image of the artist on the front of an album has huge selling appeal. A glamorous face, a famous pout. But sometimes, like the White Album, it's the lack of a face that makes an album stand out. A tactic Drake took to heart. And we'll be right back. available wherever you download your pods. Go to terryoreilly.ca for a master episode list. Drake released his 2015 album unexpectedly overnight. The cover art featured a black scribble on a white background that simply said, If you're reading this, it's

too late. An unexpected choice for Drake, given that almost all of his previous albums featured images of himself. But Drake had a plan, and he understood internet memes. And a meme, by the way, is when the public picks up on a pop culture element

and it spreads rapidly across social media. Immediately, memes featuring the album title started popping up everywhere. Fans placed, if you're reading this, it's too late on empty toilet paper rolls, on pregnancy tests, and even empty grease-stained pizza boxes. The album art spread like wildfire and soon reached viral status, selling nearly 500,000 copies in its first week. Drake's album also broke multiple Spotify records, including the most streams in a debut week reaching 17.3 million. Pretty amazing for an album released without notice

that was only sold online and had minimal, but very smart, cover art. Such is the power of social media in today's music marketing. It used to be that all the marketing for an album was handled by record companies. But today, social media gives artists a direct line to their audience. And that shift is shaping the industry. In the world of social media, vinyl records seem to be dated technology. And artists only seem to produce vinyl for special releases. But even old technology can be incredibly innovative.

Just ask Jack White. When he re-released his second studio album, Lazaretto, it wasn't your typical LP. It contained a series of unique features. To outline those features, White put out a YouTube video explaining how to play the album. While we were mixing the record, I started to get ideas about the design of the LP and what we could do differently that hadn't been done before.

And we've put them through our whole creative hive here and talked to the pressing plant to see what things we could get away with and what we could try to pull off. First of all, instead of dropping the needle on the outermost groove of side A, Lazzaretto starts at the innermost groove next to the label and plays outward. Very interesting. Next, it contained a locked groove on the outside edge, which plays infinitely on a loop. This was the first time that had ever been done, as most albums play the opposite way from the outside in, placing the normal locked groove next to the label. White was also the first artist to create under-the-label grooves, which means the needle can actually be dropped onto the label in the center of the vinyl to reveal hidden songs. On one side, the song plays at 78 RPM. On the flip side, the hidden song plays at 45 RPM.

Meaning, Lazaretto is the first vinyl record to play at 33 and a third, 45 and 78 RPM. One side of the album is shiny, the other side has a matte finish, like old-time 78s. Also, in the dead wax area of the A-side, you can see a floating hologram of an angel as the record spins. And White's favorite feature. The first song on side two has two different intros. It has an acoustic intro or an electric intro. And wherever you drop the needle, those side-by-side grooves, you're going to hear either the acoustic or the electric version of the song.

The Ultra LP from Jack White. Fascinating. There's also an important lesson in marketing here. When you can make someone look at an old familiar product in a completely new way, the surprise and marketing potential can be huge. If you're looking for flexible workouts, Peloton's got you covered. Summer runs or playoff season meditations, whatever your vibe, Peloton has thousands of classes built to push you. We know how life goes.

New father, new routines, new locations. What matters is that you have something there to adapt with you, whether you need a challenge or rest. And Peloton has everything you need, whenever you need it. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. One of the most visually creative artists in rock history has got to be David Bowie. Not only was his persona ever-changing and his live performances visually sumptuous, but many of his album covers were iconic.

From the Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, to Aladdin Sane, to Diamond Dogs, to Station to Station, Bowie instinctively understood that bold covers sold records, and that hit records public relations man who promoted entertainment acts. John took his young son David to performances, introduced him to celebrities, and taught him how to promote. In other words, how to sell himself. Those lessons made an indelible impression on Bowie. Before he made it in the music business, Bowie worked in the advertising business as an art director at a London ad agency. That experience, together with the lessons gleaned from his father, would shape his views on presentation and marketing. When it came to business, Bowie learned the hard way after a legal dispute with an early manager. But he was a quick study.

When negotiating record contracts, Bowie always chose to take less money up front from record companies, but insisted on owning his copyrights in return. Most bands went for the money. That shrewd move would eventually pay off handsomely when he became the first rock star to issue what were then called Bowie Bonds. It worked this way. Bowie sold the rights to future royalties to the 300 songs he had written before 1990. The bonds were securities that carried a 7.9% interest rate. The bonds

were offered in 1997. $55 million worth were sold. They liquidated in 2007 as planned and the rights to the income then diverted back to Bowie. Here's what all that meant. Bowie essentially got a $55 million advance on his royalties for 10 years, then the rights reverted back to him. It was a very insightful move because Bowie could see the future. He knew the internet was going to upend the music business and reduce royalty payments. So, he front-end loaded his royalties just before the music business was completely disrupted. While David Bowie's cover art was always fascinating, maybe the most intriguing example was his final studio album, Black Star.

He knew he was dying of cancer when he recorded it, but almost no one else knew of his terminal condition. The master of perception controlled his image and planned the marketing that would kick in after he passed away. Though Bowie released Black Star both digitally and on CD, he decided to leave his true masterpiece behind on vinyl. It would be a full-circle moment for the artist who released his first vinyl album in 1967. The Black Star album package reflected the dark period he was going through. The aesthetic was black on black. It had a feeling of finality to it. The cover was dominated by a large cutout of a black star that revealed the black vinyl underneath.

The very album title was telling. Journalists noted that a black star lesion is a medical term for an indication of cancer. As it turns out, the album holds several hidden secrets. Fans discovered that when the Black Star record jacket was exposed to sunlight, a galaxy of yellow stars was revealed. When the somber cover was put under a black light, the star turned vibrant blue. The font Bowie chose to use on the album was called Terminal, which came from a family of typography called Lazarus.

Heavy symbolism. When you reflected a ray of light onto one side of the vinyl at a certain angle, it created the image of a bird in flight on the ceiling. When you shone a light on the other side, a spaceship appeared. The star man certainly knew how to make a dramatic exit. The designer Bowie hired to produce the album cover, Jonathan Barnbrook, as of this writing says, there is still one more big thing people haven't discovered yet in the album artwork, but he won't divulge what it is. He wants to let the public find it,

which is rocket fuel for marketing. David Bowie died two days before his album was released. The official launch day was January 8th, which would have been his 69th birthday. It would become the biggest selling vinyl album of the year and would win the Grammy for Best Album Package. As a parting gift, the Black Star artwork was made available to the public for download under a Creative Commons non-commercial sharealike license, meaning fans are free to use the artwork on whatever they want as long as it's non-commercial. While Bowie left behind many visual treats on his final record, he wouldn't live to see one very meaningful thing.

Blackstar would be Bowie's first and only number one album. When Sheryl Crow was interviewed on CBC not long ago, she was promoting what she said was probably her last album. She didn't mean she was going to stop recording. Instead, Crow explained it this way. She spends a lot of time conceptualizing an album, writing songs that fit a theme, recording an album, thinking of the cover art,

and sequencing the songs. But so few people buy albums anymore. In a digital iTunes world, people buy single songs. So she doesn't think it's worth investing so much time into shaping a cohesive album anymore. While some artists, like Beyonce, still believe in albums, we're seeing the next evolution in music marketing. Songs are the new albums. Just as a vinyl album is a multi-sensory experience, today's songs offer a multi-social media experience. Streaming music services, the iTunes Store, Instagram themes, and Twitter memes

are the marketing campaigns of the 21st century. As you peruse music sites, you can still be stopped by an intriguing piece of artwork. You can still choose to explore a new artist because the cover image is so arresting or compelling. As more and more artists elbow their way onto your smartphone screen, great design can still generate sales appeal, even when it's the size of a postage stamp. All it takes is a little sound and vision when you're under the influence. I'm Terry O'Reilly. This episode was recorded in the Tearstream Mobile Recording Studio. Producer, Debbie O'Reilly.

Sound Engineer, Keith Ullman. Co-writer, Sydney O'Reilly. Theme music by Ari Posner and Ian Lefevre. Research, Callie O'Reilly. If you liked this episode, you might also enjoy Marketing Rock and Roll, Season 3, Episode 4. You'll find it in our archives wherever you download your podcasts. See you next week. If you're just tuning in to hear under the influence, it's too late. Meme not included.