4/19/2023 0 Comments Photo album cover![]() ![]() In 1963, Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức executed the ultimate protest against Vietnamese president Ngô Đình Diệm’s systematic oppression of his religious cohorts: he calmly sat in the middle of a busy intersection and burned himself alive. Rage Against the Machine – Rage Against the Machine It’s about as impersonal as one can get, complimenting Michaels step back from superstardom. The image was throwback in nature, and would feature none of the Michaels-focused sex appeal of the Faith album and promotional cycle. So his solution was to choose a giant group photo by influential New York City street photographer Weegee featuring an impossible mass of people at Coney Island in 1940. The one-two punch of ‘Praying for Time’ and ‘Freedom! ’90’ certainly accomplish that, and Michaels wanted an image that kept his own face out of the marketing scheme. 1 (we are still waiting on volume two, but I personally wouldn’t hold my breath) was intended as a significant artistic leap for the singer, incorporating elements of a quiet storm and more mature songwriting to his potent blend of pop. George Michael‘s Listen Without Prejudice Vol. George Michael – Listen Without Prejudice Vol. The image was perhaps most famous for its use in the documentary In the Year of the Pig, and Morrissey, ever the film buff, could likely have seen the poster featuring the soldier and took inspiration. The photograph chosen for the Meat Is Murder front cover is one of the more notable images from the Vietnam war: a young soldier with the phrase “Make War Not Love” stencilled in his helmet. ![]() Whether it was through his lyric writing on tracks like ‘Barbarism Begins At Home’ or his caustic comments in interviews, the Smiths lead singer was predisposed to whacking you over the head with a message rather than letting you interpret it yourself. Subtlety was never really Morrissey’s thing. The image was politically charged and aggressively upsetting, which made it the perfect combination with songs like ‘Government Flu’ and ‘Terminal Preppie’. Michael Well’s “Hands” shows the startling difference between the size and robustness of a starving Ugandan child’s frail hand against a white missionary’s palm. So when the band became even more confrontational on their second album Plastic Surgery Disasters, they needed an even more harrowing image for the cover. ![]() The band’s first album contained images of the several police cars on fire after Dan White was convicted of manslaughter, not murder, related to his killing of Harvey Milk. Their name alone caused an uproar with arbiters of good taste due to its apparent flippancy regarding the national tragedy that was the assassination of the Kennedy brothers. The Dead Kennedys knew the power of confrontation. Dead Kennedys – Plastic Surgery Disasters His friend Eggleston showed him his acclaimed Red Ceiling image, and the rest was history. Band leader Alex Chilton wanted to contrast the interpersonal drama that the band were going through and visualise it with mundane audacity. The ethos of taking the every day and making it magical could also be applied to Big Star, the Memphis power-pop group who were already in shambles by the time they finished their second LP Radio City. ![]() The Red Ceiling is his most famous work: a Mississippi ceiling with a light fixture that nevertheless holds a stirring and palpable quality to it. His photos were at once stark and vibrant, taking ordinary settings and making engrossing results from even the most mundane of items. William Eggleston was renowned for his ability to take colour photography and create bold, indelible images from even the most basic and universal of equipment. That takes a certain gall, but Lynne was thoroughly beholden to grandiosity on an epic scale, so the culling of such an iconic image feels fitting. But no mere approximation would do: Lynne went straight for the memorable film still to end all memorable film stills, perhaps the most famous shot in cinema. Jeff Lynne needed an image of this calibre to communicate his themes of escape and fantasy from Electric Light Orchestra’s 1974 concept album Eldorado. ![]()
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