FEATURE:
Always Judge a Record By Its…
IN THIS IMAGE: The cover of Perfume Genius’s 2025 album, Glory
The Importance of the GRAMMYS’ Inaugural Best Album Cover Category
__________
EVEN though the…
PHOTO CREDIT: Jorge Fakhouri Filho/Pexels
GRAMMYs has more than enough categories already, I did wonder why the album cover was not represented until now. The nominations are out for next year’s ceremony, are out. Category 78 concerns Best Album Cover. Even though there are only five albums included in the category – one would think they’d be more -, it is good that we finally get to shine a light on the art of albums. Below are the nominees:
“CHROMAKOPIA
Shaun Llewellyn & Luis “Panch” Perez, art directors (Tyler, The Creator)
The Crux
William Wesley II, art director (Djo)
Debí Tirar Más Fotos
Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, art director (Bad Bunny)
Glory
Cody Critcheloe & Andrew J.S., art directors (Perfume Genius)
moisturizer
Hester Chambers, Ellis Durand, Henry Holmes, Matt de Jong, Jamie-James Medina, Joshua Mobaraki & Rhian Teasdale, art directors (Wet Leg)”.
I am going to expand a bit soon and get to a feature that takes us inside the covers. It is surprising it is such a narrow category. Maybe it is indicative of a lack of genuinely great album covers. However, there have been some good ones this year. I think the cover for Lily Allen’s West End Girl is the best. I do think that artists still undervalue a cover. It is the first thing people see when they buy your album, and yet there are still so many lacklustre examples. I have talked about album art and how it is crucial. I don’t think it is a case of it being expensive to make a genuinely striking and standout cover. Even so, there are few that genuinely stand out. Even though I would replace one or two examples the GRAMMYs have selected and add others, I will highlight the cover I think should win. Though I will highlight an article that gives details about all five covers, there is one that stands out for me.
I do think that this award and new category should give impetus for artists to really consider the importance of the album cover. Even though it is not to do with the sound of an album and not as key, it is still an essential part of any album. Its visual identity and cover. It can tell a listener so much about an album and, as physical music is so in demand, it is as important now more than ever that the cover genuinely stands out. Let’s take a look at all the nominated album covers. Starting out with two very different ones:
“Cover art has always been an integral, visual part of experiencing an album. From photoshoots and creative direction to choices of typeface and color, album artwork adds an additional sensory experience to coincide with the music. And now, for the first time in its 68-year history, album covers are also part of the GRAMMYs.
The Crux, the third album by Joe Keery under his musical alias Djo, is bound by a tangible sense of place. Namely, the hotel of its title, which is filled with guests facing various crossroads of one kind or another in their lives.
Shot on the famed Paramount Pictures studio lot in Los Angeles, the album's cover — which was overseen by art director William Wesley II — brings the fictional Crux Hotel to life, as it teems with guests appearing in the windows of their rooms and passersby rushing to and fro below the building's old-fashioned neon sign. As a small airplane hauls a banner declaring, "I'M SORRY CINDY AND I LOVE YOU" across the top of the frame, Djo himself hangs precipitously from one of the hotel's second-story windows, clad in a white, '70s-style suit.
In a January appearance on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon," Keery revealed some of the inspiration behind the lively, Easter egg-packed cover art. "I've done stuff that's kind of minimalistic before and I just wanted a maximal cover … A theme of the record is 'one of many,' so just having a lot going on and a lot to look at," he said before pointing out the miniscule mouse dressed as the bellman that was included in the shoot "just for me."
Bad Bunny's 2025 album, Debí Tirar Más Fotos, is notable for being the lone cover in this year's pack of nominated albums devoid of any human subject. Instead, the three-time GRAMMY winner — who art directed the cover himself — chose an image of two plastic Monobloc chairs in front of a banana tree to represent the love letter to his native Puerto Rico.
The cover of DtMF, which translates in English to I Should Have Taken More Photos, beautifully captures the essence and natural beauty of Bad Bunny's homeland, where he spent the better part of the summer and early fall performing his sold-out residency at San Juan's José Miguel Agrelot Coliseum.
The image is also punctuated by a palpable sense of longing created by the empty chairs in the foreground, which many fans speculated were a veiled reference to the rapper's past relationship to girlfriend Gabriela Berlingeri, with whom he split in 2022. While Bad Bunny has never publicly confirmed any connection between the cover art and his personal life, the back cover of the album includes a heartfelt dedication to his culture and community in his own words: "This project is dedicated to all Puerto Ricans around the world".
Whilst that first album cover is quite busy and there is a lot to draw the eye, the second is barer and sparse. Both are eye-catching and memorable for different reasons. The Crux reminds me of album covers of old, especially in the 1960s and 1970s, where you would get these collage-like compositions. A lot happening in the frame. The Crux look like a film unfolding. A packed scene where the viewer is looking at an action scene come to life. There are so many things to consider when you have such a layered or full cover. Making sure every person and object stands out and has a place. It can be easy to make it too overloaded or distracting. However, William Wesley II has got the balance just right. You look at the cover and assume it is in America somewhere, but not quite sure where. There is more mystery when it comes to Debí Tirar Más Fotos. Two cheap, white plastic chairs in a clearing somewhere. Maybe chairs that were occupied by two lovers who sat there for peace. That possible personal importance for Bad Bunny and Puerto Rica. It is a mix of the exotic with the mundane or even cheap. Although it is not my favourite of the nominated covers, I can understand why it has been selected. Like a busy and bustling album cover, it is very hard to make sure something emptier or less fulsome stands out. Different dynamics. It is less about multiple focuses and a cast of characters. You have a very defined and concentrated centre. Getting the colour palette right. The white chairs against the browns, greens and yellows.
Before getting to the album cover I think will win, there are two strikingly different ones. The first from a terrific U.S. Hip-Hop/Neo-Soul great. Tyler, the Creator has actually released another album since the cover for CHROMAKOPIA was nominated – though DON’T TAP THE GLASS is not quite as memorable. 2017’s Flower Boy is one of those modern greats when it comes to the cover. Floral, fantastical and bright, it definitely stays in the mind. It radiates sunshine and summer. Conversely, CHROMAKOPIA is sepia, it looks like this film icon of the 1940s or 1950s posing. You look at the image and there are so many questions and interpretations:
“With a catalog of striking, often colorful album covers, Tyler, The Creator opted to appear in sepia on the cover of his eighth studio set, CHROMAKOPIA. The stark portrait depicts the two-time GRAMMY-winning rapper wearing a ceramic mask of his own face, his right hand outstretched toward whomever is behind the camera.
The mask plays several purposes on the cover, mainly to introduce fans to St. Chroma, Tyler's latest alter ego (who bears a marked similarity to Chroma the Great from Norton Juster's classic children's book The Phantom Toolbooth), and tap into the album's themes of identity, authenticity and the divide between public persona and inner self.
According to art director Luis "Panch" Perez, Tyler wanted to channel the film noir of the 1930s and '40s, even bringing a screen test from an unnamed Alfred Hitchcock movie to set as inspiration. "He wanted the cover to feel like it came from a film of that era," Perez revealed in a November 2024 interview with ArtNews.
"It changes how you see Tyler, which was obviously very much a reason why he made it the way he made it," the rapper's longtime visual collaborator added of the eerie cover shot. "It makes the viewer really pay attention to what's going on with him. It makes you want to go, 'Wait, what's going on here? I'm unsettled by what I'm seeing”.
It is an unsettling image, for sure. However, it is one that inspires the mind. Thinking about the artist and the music in a way you would not have if there was a different cover. A less engaging one. I do think that CHROMAKOPIA is in with a shout at scooping the GRAMMY. For me, it is the second-best cover, though one that warrants a lot of love and respect. I am never a fan of self-portrait covers and artists including images of themselves, as it is so lazy and lacks creativity. Also, many of them are just straight portraits and there is nothing unusual or interesting going on. When it comes to CHROMAKOPIA, there is so much to dissect and explore.
I liked Wet Leg’s eponymous 2022 debut album, though I am not struck by the cover. It shows core members Hester Chambers and Rhian Teasdale with their backs to camera and their arms around each other’s backs. However, for their second album, moisturizer, they have stepped it up. I am not keen on the title or the American spelling – though you do wonder why the album was called that -, but the cover has a lot going for it:
“Wet Leg's sophomore album, 2025's moisturizer, marks the band's first studio effort as a quintet with guitarist Joshua Mobraki, bassist Ellis Durand and drummer Henry Holmes joining original duo Rihan Teasdale and Hester Chambers as fully contributing members.
That newly evolved group mentality is also reflected in the British rockers' nomination for moisturizer's feral cover art, with all five members credited as art directors alongside Matt de Jong and Jamie-James Medina.
Teasdale and Chambers take center stage in the artwork, however. The frontwoman stares down the camera with a devilish grin, crouched on all fours, while the lead guitarist's back is to the camera, arms wrapped around herself to show off her pointed nails.
"Not just the album cover, but I think, like, the whole energy of the creative is kind of subversive," Teasdale explained to Variety upon the album's release. "Like, if there's any moments on there that are a bit sexy, it's also a bit disgusting. Juxtaposition is something that we've always done … That's something that is always fun to play with”.
Once more, Hester Chambers has her back to camera. Representing being a mystery or in the background, she has her arms gripped around her body. Whether signifying a struggle, madness or a clinch (how you can pretend you’re kissing someone by wrapping your arms around your back like it is another person doing that), it is this submissive or romantic background set against the more maniacal or distrusted look given by Rhian Teasdale. Even though Wet Leg are a quintet now, it is their original two members who are at the centre here. Also, I am curious about the image and the connection to the title. It is hard to draw comparisons or figure the link. Which sort of makes the cover more intriguing! Also, the use of white and blue for the cover. It is quite calming and soothing, clashed against the intense flame of red hair and red lips at the centre.
Consider iconic covers from the past and contemporary artists and you do wonder how many artists reach these peaks. Whether the album art market is declining or less important. I think that great album covers are so important. The album cover that I feel will win the GRAMMY is from Perfume Genius. In terms of matching the music and lyrics, the cover for Glory is one of the standouts of the year:
“Over the course of his career, Perfume Genius has appeared as a near-statuesque figure on many of his album covers, from the polished portraiture of 2014's Too Bright and shirtless still that graces the cover of 2020's Set My Heart on Fire Immediately to the painterly rendering of 2022's Ugly Season.
In the imagery for 2025's Glory, the art-pop auteur born Mike Hadreas is shown toppled over, sprawled on the floor of a wood-paneled home with his legs askew and midriff bare as a bevy of extension cords run beneath his body. In a conversation with Wallpaper upon Glory's release, Perfume Genius delved into the creative process behind the unnerving suburban scene, which was directed by his longtime collaborators Cody Critcheloe and Andrew J.S.
"I like how it looks: it could be a dance, or it could be that I'm sick, and there's something wrong with me. That was the thing that felt riskiest about that photoshoot, it could go any way," he told the outlet. "When we got the pictures back, it felt like a snapshot, almost like a still from a movie … It feels like the music, in that it's earnest and personal, but with absurdity and dramatics, and performance”.
That image of Perfume Genius (Michael Hadreas) on the floor. It looks like he has tripped. Or is just asleep on the floor. With wires on the floor, there are trip hazards. It looks like two different scenes. The window looks out, though it is a ground floor room and it doesn’t seem to fit with what’s outside. You imagine this house being somewhere remote or in the city, yet the outside seems to be suburban. The mysterious man looking from the outside in. The friend or compatriot of Perfume Genius looking on as he is in this contorted position. Did Perfume Genius fall from the outside in? And, if so, how and why? You look at the cover over and over and try and figure it out. Such an arresting shot and composition, it is an award-winning effort from Cody Critcheloe & Andrew J.S. A rare case of album artwork being as discussion-worthy and brilliant as the music inside. It will be interesting who wins the inguinal Best Album Cover GRAMMY on 1st February. More than anything, I hope the category grows – in terms of nominees – and artists take it as motivation to really put everything into their covers. It is a subjective measure, what makes a great cover, though there are too many faceless and unambitious efforts. The five highlighted above all have their own personality and feel. Each different and remarkable. There have been album covers made in the past five or ten years that can rival the all-time best, yet most of the very best are from decades ago. However, there is nothing to say that very soon we will not get a wave of stunning covers that are…
PHOTO CREDIT: Anastasiya Badun/Pexels
MODERN classic.