116. ABBA - The Album

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On this work the  album's front and back  covers are placed  side by side with  each other and part of the white  background  has been  converted to black.

ABBA The Album  was released in Scandinavia  on 12 December 1977  through Polar Music,  but due to the massive  pre-orders the  UK pressing plants were

not able to press sufficient copies  before Christmas 1977  and so it was not released in the UK until January 1978.  The album was released in conjunction

with ABBA: The Movie, with several of the songs featured in the film.

Polar's official cover featured an entirely white background,  and is the basis for current CD versions.  However,  Epic Records'  original UK release of the LP
featured a blue background on the front cover, fading to white at the bottom. It also featured a gatefold sleeve. The back cover was altered, incorporating
a similar photo of ABBA to that used  elsewhere in the world for the inner sleeve,  and referencing tracks included in  ABBA: The Movie.  The inner gatefold
was designed to look like an air mail envelope,  similar to the style later used for  Gracias Por La Música  and even had a photo of ABBA incorporated into a
stamp in the corner. wikipedia


We had a vinyl copy of this album as part of our family's record collection in 1978.

Photo by Barry Levine/Mirage, album design by Rune Soderqvist, illustrations by Rune Soderqvist and Bjorn Andersson.
Album produced by Bjorn Andersson & Benny Ulvaeus. Polar, Epic (UK), Atltantic (US) 1977. 


ABBA's fifth album was a marked step forward for the group, having evolved out of Europop music into a world-class rock act over their previous
two albums,  they now proceeded  to absorb and assimilate  some of the influences  around them,  particularly the laid-back California sound of
Fleetwood Mac  (curiously,  like ABBA,  then a band with two couples at its center),  as well as some of the attributes  of progressive rock.  That
they did this without  compromising their  essential virtues  as a pop ensemble  makes this album seem even  more extraordinary,  though at the
time nobody bothered to analyze it -  The Album was simply an incredibly popular release, yielding two British number one singles in "The Name
of the Game" and "Take a Chance on Me" (which made the Top Five in America, their second-best showing after "Dancing Queen"),  and achieving
the quartet's highest-ever showing on the U.S. LP charts, reaching the Top 20 and selling a million copies in six months.
AllMusic review by William Ruhlmann

ABBA: The Album  reached number 1 in many territories.  In the UK it debuted at the top and remained  there for seven weeks,  ending up as the
third biggest selling album of the year  (behind the movie soundtrack LPs of  Saturday Night Fever and Grease).  In the US it became their highest
charting album,  where during 1978 ABBA undertook a big  promotional campaign.  Due to the Cold War,  Western music was actively discouraged
throughout Eastern  Europe at the time.  Despite this,  ABBA: The Album sold an unprecedented one million copies in Poland in 1977,  exhausting
the country's entire  allocation of foreign currency.  In Russia,  only 200,000  copies  were permitted to be pressed;  however,  demand within the
USSR indicated they could have sold 40 million copies. wikipedia

(A) Eagle - Take a Chance on Me - One Man, One Woman, The Name of the Game

(B) Move On - Hole in Your Soul - The Girl with the Golden Hair: Three Scenes from a Mini-Musical: Thank You for the Music - I Wonder (Departure) - I'm a Marionette



"Eagle" live from Superstellina2012 on YouTube.


               

     

www.abbasite.com

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115. Fleetwood Mac - Fleetwood Mac

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On the cover of Rumours  Mick Fleetwood is seen laying a crystal ball on the palm of his right hand
as if making an offer to Stevie Nicks,  who appears to be so  intently gazing at it,  with her left leg
bending and willingly resting on Mick's right as her body arches towards him and her arms stretches
to her back, seemingly ready to offer everything in return to pursuit to that crystal ball. 

This was the way it was in 1977.

On the cover of Fleetwood Mac's  second eponymous album,  released two years earlier,  a stretched
Mick Fleetwood  is seen sipping  champagne  from a  trumpet looking  detached from a  compressed
John McVie who nervously tosses a crystal ball into the air. 

Maybe that crystal ball carried a different meaning in 1977, or perhaps that was a lesser ball back in
1975.   


On my work above, I took the figures away from the arched French door frame that was their background and added an inversion of the image of
Mick and John at left.  Now, it's John's turn to be  stretched and he still has  that crystal ball.  The arched frame is returned at centre without the
figures and the band's name, in the calligraphy of Rumours, is added below. 

These are doubled in contrasting shades to match the figures of Mick and John.  The doubling tells us it's the band's second eponymous album. The
cutout from John's upper body suggests Fleetwood Mac  was part history when Rumours came.  Changing the background  from white to the murky
shade of light yellow signifies that Rumours had greater impact on Fleetwood Mac fans than Fleetwood Mac  or that the crystal ball is now seen as
a window that can foretell the future of the band. 


Here's the original album cover art design.

No. 182, Rolling Stone, The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time; No. 184, The Virgin All-Time Album Top 1000  

Photography by Herbert W. Worthington. Album produced by Fleetwood Mac & Keith Olsen. Reprise 1975.

Adding Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks to the group wasn’t like any other band member change that Fleetwood Mac had gone through since
their formation  in the late 60s.  There was  something  about the  chemistry  that just exploded,  and the band  decided to re-brand themselves.
Hence Fleetwood Mac (1975).  If you’ll recall,  the very first Mac album was also self-titled,  so this move appears to be a very  blatant call for a
new image.  Fleetwood  Mac ’75  is also  the 10th  studio  album released  by the band.  So there  are all sorts  of reasons  for the  repeat name.
Fleetwood Mac ’75 reached number one on the US Billboard top 200. Maggie Felisberto's blog. 

(A) Monday Morning - Warm Ways - Blue Letter - Rhiannon - Over My Head - Crystal

(B) Say You Love Me - Landslide - World Turning - Sugar Daddy - I'm So Afraid

"Rhiannon" live from Stevie Nicks on YouTube.

                

      

www.fleetwoodmac.com

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108. Madonna - True Blue

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Here are a dozen Madonnas over a true blue background under a cool blue filter.
Before this process the original album art work was posterized and crosshatched and brightness was adjusted in three levels. 


The album cover, shot by photographer Herb Ritts, is one of Madonna's most recognizable pictures.  It features a picture of Madonna from the neck up.
The main colors in the picture are gray, white and various shades of blue to reinforce the album's title.  Madonna positioned herself in an elegant pose
while wearing pale make up with red lips,  tilting back her neck in a swan like pose.  Jeri Heiden,  who was working at Warner Bros. art department,
was given the  task of editing the photos and  making them compatible for  appearance in an album cover.  She had to work with a total of 60 rolls of
photos, each of size 35 mm. Heiden ordered about 30 to 40 test prints from Ritts' studio and made recommendations based on it. Several images from
the photo shoot were considered for the album cover, some of which later became the single covers for "Papa Don't Preach", "True Blue" and "Open Your
Heart". The final photo was selected by Madonna, Heiden and Jeff Ayeroff, creative director of Warner Bros. at that time.

After the final photo was selected, Heiden commissioned two different versions of the album cover. The original image was taken in black-and-white,
and Heiden  experimented with a variety  of treatments of the photo,  to go along with the album's title,  and finally  arrived  at the blue toned, hand
tinted version of the image.  The LP and CD album  cover is a cropped image of a longer picture including torso,  more of which is seen in the cover of
the cassette tape edition,  and was also  included  as a fold-out  poster in the initial pressings of the LP. A poster of Madonna,  mirroring the cover art,
was included within the vinyl versions of the album. wikipedia

No. 49, Billboard, The 300 Best-Selling Albums of All Time

No. 67, Rolling Stone, The 100 Greatest Album Covers.


Photo by Herb Ritts,  art direction  by Jeffrey Kent Ayeroff,  album produced  by Madonna,  Stephen Bray &  Patrick Leonard.  Sire,  Warner Bros. 1986.


According to Lucy O'Brien,  author of Madonna:  Like an Icon,  the album artwork was on-par with Andy Warhol's concept of pop art.  She felt that the
image  was  a mixture  of  innocence  and idealism,  while  incorporating  1950s-style  Technicolor  and  hand  tinted color,  characteristic  of Warhol's
silkscreen printed design,  prevalent in the 1960s.  Jeri Heiden, the album's cover designer, commented, "She was already highly aware of the value of
her image and was in control of it. After I took the photo, it appeared as if she was floating—her clothing was not visible. She took on the appearance
of a marble statue,  goddess-like."  O'Brien felt that the artwork  heralded the arrival of a new Madonna,  while drawing on the enduring appeal of her
celluloid icon Marilyn Monroe.  "With this picture, Madonna made explicit the connection between Warhol and herself, the vivid nexus between pop art
and commerce. The late 1980s marked a new era of the pop artist as a brand, and Madonna became the first one to exploit this."

Erica Wexler from Spin described Madonna on the cover as  "like a cobra basking in the hot sun,  Madonna on the cover of her new album stretches her
profile lasciviously."  Author J. Randy Taraborrelli  commented in Madonna: An Intimate Biography,  that the album cover indicated how True Blue was
a vehicle of  growth for  Madonna.  He felt that the "washed  out color  photograph"  of her with head  tilted  back and eyes  closed was "understated",
especially  when compared  to the sexier  poses she  had been  associated in the past.  The album's inner sleeve  did not feature  any photographs, and
instead  was dedicated  to album  credits  and the  song lyrics,  since  Madonna  wanted to  be represented  by her songs on  True Blue,  not her image.
Billboard listed  the cover  at rank 34 on  their article  about the  "50 Greatest Album Covers",  describing  it as a striking  image of the singer. wikipedia

Photo from Art Blart

(A) Papa Don't Preach - Open Your Heart - White Heat - Live to Tell

(B) Where's the Party - True Blue - La Isla Bonita - Jimmy Jimmy - Love Makes the World Go Round



"La Isla Bonita" Official Music Video from QueenMadonnaHD on YouTube.   

 

            

    

www.madonna.com 

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