Now that vinyl is making a comeback, it’s good to see folks appreciating the art of the album cover again, even though a recent article I read somewhere (and am too lazy to cite for reference) says that album art is shrinking as we move further into the digital age.
Matthew Chojnacki’s new book, “Put The Needle On The Record”, takes us back to the glory days of the eighties, when not only album art was the rage, but many artists invested time and care into their single art. “Needle” looks back at some of those pieces and also offers a bit of commentary from the author, the cover artists, and the musicians. With a foreword from Scissor Sisters’ Jake Shears (whose music is heavily Eighties influenced) and an afterword from Duran Duran’s Nick Rhodes (who personifies the Eighties as much as anyone does), it’s certainly co-signed by some pretty big names.
I was only able to check out a sample of the book, but some of the best single art of the decade is featured here, by an array of classic artists from Cyndi Lauper and Luther Vandross (the juxtaposition of her “What’s Going On” cover against Luther’s “It’s Over Now” is pretty interesting) to Kurtis Blow and Sugarhill Gang (good Lord, hip-hop art was primitive back then…well, not so. Record label budgets were quite small for the aspiring hip-hop artist.) I’m definitely interested in checking out the entire book. Seems like a pretty sweet coffee table piece. Hopefully the single art from the song that provides the book’s title (courtesy of M/A/R/R/S) makes an appearance too!
“Put The Needle on The Record” is available for preorder on amazon.com and you can purchase it here.
The book also has a Facebook page, man!