The Album Cover

Will Butler:

For those who are under 20, memes used to come in a little plastic case that you would buy at the store, and they also had music that went to them.

Caroline Desrosiers:

And they were fully composed albums.

Will Butler:

Right, and people worked quite hard on them, yeah.

Will Butler:

You're listening to Say My Meme, the podcast that describes the Internet's best memes for a blind audience. I'm your co-host, Will Butler, from Be My Eyes, and I'm joined by Carolyn Desrosiers from Scribely. I do feel like maybe album art is a little more dashed off than it used to be. I know there are artists out there who spend a lot of time on their art, but it doesn't get looked at the way it used to, people don't hold it in their hands and flip through the pages, like you're saying, read the lyrics all written out like poems. It was definitely a different era.

Caroline Desrosiers:

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Will Butler:

What were your first CDs?

Caroline Desrosiers:

Oh, let's see. I think I did have the Michael Jackson Thriller album on cassette, actually.

Will Butler:

Okay.

Caroline Desrosiers:

So I guess the first one was the cassette, and oddly enough I think the next one after that was Bush. Do you remember Bush?

Will Butler:

Oh yeah, mm-hmm (affirmative).

Caroline Desrosiers:

Yeah. What about you?

Will Butler:

Will Smith Willennium.

Caroline Desrosiers:

Is that because your name is Will?

Will Butler:

Maybe. And Fastball. Do you remember that song The Way?

Caroline Desrosiers:

No.

Will Butler:

"Where were they going without ever knowing the way?"

Caroline Desrosiers:

Oh my God, I haven't thought about that song in years. Yes.

Will Butler:

"Anyone can see the road..." Yeah, that was random, oh, and Barenaked Ladies, because I love that song One Week.

Caroline Desrosiers:

Oh, "One week since you looked at me."

Will Butler:

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Caroline Desrosiers:

Yeah, we come from the same era, so this is working today, that's great.

Will Butler:

And my brother got Blink 182, he was a little edgier.

Caroline Desrosiers:

Awesome.

Will Butler:

So this is the reason we decided to talk about album art, the album cover this week. And for those of you who never grew up looking at the album cover, you might learn something about some of your favorite music today.

Caroline Desrosiers:

Yeah.

Will Butler:

All right, the album cover. Number one, what have we got?

Caroline Desrosiers:

Here we go. So as we've been talking about, there was a time in history when the album cover meant absolutely everything, and I feel like it just helped sell it. You go to a record store, or you go to the music store and you're flipping through and you're trying to find what you want to buy, and the album cover jumps out at you and catches your attention. Well in the eighties they clearly found the pose that was guaranteed to sell records, I feel like.

Will Butler:

Okay.

Caroline Desrosiers:

So picture four album covers, it's like a grid, Lionel Richie, Michael Jackson, Teddy Pendergrass, and Luther Vandross, They're all on the ground, propped up on an elbow, looking very seductive, and the caption is, "You knew the album was great if they hit this lean on the cover."

Will Butler:

You know what's funny is I actually, and probably many listeners, know the lean that you're talking about.

Caroline Desrosiers:

Yeah.

Will Butler:

It's this very specific pose where you're leaning on your elbow and you've got one leg up, right?

Caroline Desrosiers:

Yeah, yeah. It's bent at the knee and they're leaning into their bent elbow, and like relaxing back.

Will Butler:

And your legs are kind of scissored up.

Caroline Desrosiers:

Yes, yes. So I guess this is seduction in the eighties.

Will Butler:

Right, right, I was just going to say, the way that you would see someone laying on a spinning circular bed in a movie.

Caroline Desrosiers:

That's perfect.

Will Butler:

Right.

Caroline Desrosiers:

Yes.

Will Butler:

Yeah, so this pose was used in multiple albums.

Caroline Desrosiers:

Yeah, it's amazing to see them all lined up like this, they're just hitting that exact same pose, and these albums are really close together. I looked at the years, 1981, 1982, '83, '86, so within a period of five years they're all hitting this pose.

Will Butler:

I wonder if there was some executive at Atlantic Records, or something like that, who minted this pose.

Caroline Desrosiers:

Yeah.

Will Butler:

It probably had a name, like the Rosenberg pose, or something.

Caroline Desrosiers:

The Rosenberg lean.

Will Butler:

The Rosenberg lean.

Caroline Desrosiers:

Oh, I don't know. Yeah, but I guess it worked. I mean, if it's not broken, then you don't have to change it. I bet they sold a bunch of records.

Will Butler:

Some suit somewhere at RCA was like, "Just put your leg up like this."

Caroline Desrosiers:

Perfect.

Will Butler:

Yeah, and then for years to come we all had to look at men doing this on album covers.

Caroline Desrosiers:

Yeah.

Will Butler:

Wow. Well, they're all great artists.

Caroline Desrosiers:

Yeah, it's kind of like who did it best, really, one of those, and they're all just special in their own way, but awesome.

Will Butler:

Amazing, amazing. All right, what else have we got for album covers?

Caroline Desrosiers:

Comes to us in the form of a Kendrick Lamar album cover that's quite famous at this point, and it pictures him, it's just a simple portrait, and he's just looking very sullen and drained of energy. And across the top of the photo, in bright red letters, is the album title, and it's Damn., with a period. Very simple, minimalist, and caught people's attention because it's kind of an unusual design. The caption for this is, "When you look at your checking account after a long weekend of bad decisions." Damn.

Will Butler:

Yeah, I remember when this album came out, this was probably six or seven years ago, and a friend of mine actually designed this album cover, and he got a lot of, I don't want to say flack, but some trolls, because this Kendrick Lamar cover looks like just a portrait that someone put big MS Paint words over. It looks very thrown together, but then the more you look at it the more you're like, wait, this is art?

Caroline Desrosiers:

Yeah. Oh my gosh, so is your friend, I researched this, is your friend Vlad Sepetov?

Will Butler:

Yeah.

Caroline Desrosiers:

Okay, all right.

Will Butler:

That would be awkward if I didn't.

Caroline Desrosiers:

Yeah. Well I'm really glad that I have the opinion that I do, which is yeah, this is art, it does something different. I guess people thought it was bad design, and I guess I could see that in a way, because it's a very bright red clashing against a dark red brick wall behind him, so maybe that people had a hard time with, and the letters are super large and blown out, but I think it's quite unusual, and arguably a very good album cover.

Will Butler:

It got people talking.

Caroline Desrosiers:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Will Butler:

And if that's the metric of goodness, an at least for now album cover, he did something right.

Caroline Desrosiers:

Oh yeah, definitely from the meme world. I mean, everyone just went crazy, pairing things up with this tagline.

Will Butler:

Yeah, I remember all the Damn. memes.

Caroline Desrosiers:

Yeah.

Will Butler:

Yeah, okay, what else have we got?

Caroline Desrosiers:

All right, so this next one takes one of the most famous album covers of all time and makes it about a feeling I feel like we've all had about work. So picture John, Ringo, Paul, and George walking across Abbey Road, and they're photo-shopped to make it look like they're all hunching forward like they're tired old men on their way to work, and the caption is just simply, "Mondays..."

Will Butler:

Weird. Wait, how did they? Okay, so they took the Abbey Road cover, which is iconic, obviously, where they're all strutting out, very upright, right?

Caroline Desrosiers:

Yeah.

Will Butler:

Their legs are out, they look like they're walking with purpose all across this crosswalk together, but how did they warp it?

Caroline Desrosiers:

Oh my God, it's kind of amazing, really. It's well done. It's so well done that I had to look up, is this an actual photo? Did they do this?

Will Butler:

Really?

Caroline Desrosiers:

I don't know, maybe they did, maybe there's an unusual photograph, but I couldn't find one, and I guess it's just a really good Photoshop job of them just tilting the top part from their upper back, like it's curved, they created this curved line, and their heads are drooping forward. And so they're slumped. Yeah, it's amazing, and their arms are dangling, kind of giving you sad Charlie Brown vibes, I feel like.

Will Butler:

Whoa. Oh wait, I just pulled it up here, and I'm zooming in on it. Yeah, the effect is pretty remarkable because it really does look like them just really sadly dragging their feet across Abbey Road.

Caroline Desrosiers:

Yeah, I was like, well done, impressed with this one.

Will Butler:

That's a good Monday's meme.

Caroline Desrosiers:

Yeah.

Will Butler:

Awesome. All right, what else we got here?

Caroline Desrosiers:

All right, the next one is all about Lana Del Ray. Did you ever listen to any of her albums?

Will Butler:

Oh yeah, yeah.

Caroline Desrosiers:

Okay, how would you describe her music?

Will Butler:

Like Betty Boop on lithium.

Caroline Desrosiers:

Oh my God, that's a really good way to describe it succinctly.

Will Butler:

Right?

Caroline Desrosiers:

Yeah, she's very dark, sultry, pensive, she's famous for that style.

Will Butler:

Yeah, mm-hmm (affirmative).

Caroline Desrosiers:

And sold, I mean, she just was number one for her album and that style back in 2012. But this memes all about that effect that Lana Del Ray has on us, I feel like, as listeners, and they make a comment on that using two of her album covers. So in the first she's looking down at the camera with a dark, severe expression, and maybe people will guess what album that's for. The second is she's more bohemian Lana with a sunny, genuine smile and flowers in her hair. And the album titles are in contrast to one another, Born to Die and Lust for Life, and the caption above that reads, "I'm just glad she's feeling better."

Will Butler:

So Lust for Life came after Born to Die, I think.

Caroline Desrosiers:

Way after, yeah. But when you put these two next to each other, they couldn't be more different.

Will Butler:

Right.

Caroline Desrosiers:

Not only the titles, but the visual, I mean, she is scary and eerie in the first one, and she's just very genuine and warm, so kind of surprising.

Will Butler:

You know, Lana Del Ray, if I can put on my music critics hat here, which I haven't done for a while, but she's a known performer, and she's reinvented herself many, many times. And she started out as Lizzie Grant, as this struggling artist, and she sang with a different voice, and she was signed to a major label, but it didn't go so well, and all this different. So Lana Del Ray is a re-invention, and then even when Lana Del Ray became popular, she had to, I think, continue to reinvent herself over and over again because she kept having these weird little bumps along the way. So I don't want to overstep, but this may be a comment on Lana Del Ray's persistently re-inventing herself in order to cater to the most mass audience possible.

Caroline Desrosiers:

Oh my gosh, so interesting. I didn't know all that backstory on her, yeah.

Will Butler:

Who knows, sometimes these memes are deeper than they seem, sometimes they're not.

Caroline Desrosiers:

Right, yeah.

Will Butler:

If I could just ascribe a little context to it. Cool, is that it? Or do we have one more?

Caroline Desrosiers:

No, we have one more and it's amazing.

Will Butler:

Okay.

Caroline Desrosiers:

Okay, I love this one. So to understand this meme you'll have to know a little bit more about the backstory. During COVID lockdown a group of seniors in an assisted living home created parodies of iconic album covers. And this means is a little bit different, we haven't done one like this before because it doesn't have the typical caption. The humor is all in the album name for the parody album. So picture side-by-side Polaroid photo album covers, Taylor Swift versus a senior woman in her nineties, and they're both wearing the exact same sweater, the exact same dark lipstick, and the top of the frame cuts off just below the eyes. So they've recreated this album cover. And just below the Polaroid photo written in Sharpie marker is TS 1989 and RC 1922.

Will Butler:

And this sweet older lady is really nailing the pose.

Caroline Desrosiers:

She is, yeah, and it's just like, oh my God, look at this, 1922 versus 1989 for Taylor Swift and that famous album she made, and she just recreated it perfectly, and when I saw that I was like, oh, that's just great.

Will Butler:

It's like, which one is more impressive to you, really? 1922, 1989?

Caroline Desrosiers:

1922, she has lived through a lot, when you think about what happened, so yeah, pretty impressive.

Will Butler:

Shouts out to this nursing home. What's the story here?

Caroline Desrosiers:

Yeah, so it's called Sydmar Lodge Care Home in Edgware, England, and basically the activities coordinator wanted to just make something fun, and try to make the time a little bit more enjoyable and interesting. And so he started making suggestions on which albums would suit different people and their personalities or their looks. And then he just helped them get clothes and the makeup. He must've taken the photos, but they're so well done, really, right down to the lighting, they're just wonderful.

Will Butler:

Wow, they have album covers for Michael Jackson Bad, for Elvis, for Johnny Cash.

Caroline Desrosiers:

Yeah, really cool.

Will Butler:

The Clash, these are incredible, the Elvis one is so good. It really, I don't know, that's a very cool thing they did.

Caroline Desrosiers:

Yeah.

Will Butler:

I'm into it. You don't see enough of the elder generation juxtapose with our pop culture, I'm all for anything that brings that forward. That's awesome.

Caroline Desrosiers:

Oh yeah. I mean, this is just super creative and fun. Yeah, I loved looking at all those, and yeah, I'd call it a meme because it's got a punchline, RC 1922, and it brings you joy, you're like, oh, that's really cool.

Will Butler:

Yeah. Sometimes these memes aren't even jokes you can describe, it's just something that people are compelled by and they want to share.

Caroline Desrosiers:

Yeah.

Will Butler:

Like, oh, that's cool, share it around. Very cool. Wow, okay, well the album cover, an unlikely episode, but there's some really interesting stuff in there. And I wonder if folks will go back and go through some of their old album covers after this episode.

Caroline Desrosiers:

Right, yeah, and we should bring that back, even if it is all digital.

Will Butler:

Yeah. There's some vinyl heads out there that are still looking at album covers.

Caroline Desrosiers:

Yeah.

Will Butler:

Yeah. Cool, well thank you, Carolyn, as always, and you're going on a big hiking trip this summer, aren't you?

Caroline Desrosiers:

I am. Yeah, I'm taking on the Wonderland Trail.

Will Butler:

The Wonderland Trail, where is that?

Caroline Desrosiers:

Up in Mount Rainier National Park in Washington.

Will Butler:

Oh, wow.

Caroline Desrosiers:

Yeah.

Will Butler:

So you're going to be backpacking through back country and whatnot?

Caroline Desrosiers:

Yeah, 10 days out there.

Will Butler:

Wow.

Caroline Desrosiers:

Basically, yeah, it's going to be a hard hike, but I'm sure it will be beautiful. But yeah, that's my idea of a vacation is hard work, I guess.

Will Butler:

No memes out there.

Caroline Desrosiers:

No, I mean, I'll look around, but I don't think so.

Will Butler:

You're going to come back with an episode that's just pictures of birds and twigs.

Caroline Desrosiers:

Yeah, nature memes, all created by me.

Will Butler:

With your own captions.

Caroline Desrosiers:

Yeah.

Will Butler:

You're like, "And this one, get this, Mockingbird, more like rocking bird, am I right?

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