Where do musical and visual art meet? On the album covers.
Throughout most of my life, I have known covers of such albums as The Beatles’ “Abbey Road” and “Sgt. Pepper,” David Bowie’s “The Rise and Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars,” King Crimson’s “In the Court of the Crimson King,” Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side Of The Moon,” or Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells.” Still, the truth is that for many years, I have not been listening to these albums. I discovered music from these albums within the last two years (I wrote this text on the 25th of May, 2023). After listening to all the above albums, my perception of covers drastically changed.
Before I listened to the albums, I was always curious why these album covers were considered iconic.
I always wondered what music hid behind these covers. After listening to the abovementioned albums, my perception of visual art changed. After hearing the music of all the geniuses written above, I solved the riddle of why the music from the albums and their covers are recognized as classic today. While writing about all these things, I reminded myself of one experience regarding David Bowie’s “Life On Mars?” song. I wrote about it in one of my first texts, “Is There Life On Mars?” When I heard the “Life On Mars?” song for the first time, I did not see the video clip.
My perception of the music changed dramatically after watching the video clip.
Quite a similar issue was with the album covers of the albums mentioned above. When I knew only the visual surface, I was imagining music. Of course, I knew the single songs from the albums, but I did not know them in their entirety. After hearing the whole concept, the story of visualizing music ended.
On the other hand, the extraordinary journey of discovering the great artists’ artistic legacy began simultaneously.
I like listening to music (not only from the abovementioned albums) while visually analyzing and contemplating albums’ covers. I remember I did it many times when I was truly young, when my beloved Parents were turning on our Michael Jackson’s vinyls, “Thriller,” and “Bad.” It was happening in the early ’90s in Malkinia Gorna (Masovia). As a reminder, I was born in 1985.
