The Highs and Lows of Nude Photography on Album Covers
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One of my favorite records of the year, Motomami (2022) by Rosalia, is also one of the most confusing album covers I've ever seen. Rosalia is fully naked, wearing a gigantic motorcycle helmet while covering herself demurely with claw-like nails like a Botticelli's Venus from hell. She seems to be toying with the many tropes of naked women selling testosterone-laden music made by male artists, but the photo itself feels like a meme created by a hungover art director after a three-day binger. As a representation of one of the most talented and unique voices in pop music, it fails.
Trying to understand why, I started thinking about the use of nudity on music albums and came up with a list of stunning successes and unfortunate mistakes by artists of all genders.
Rosalia, Motomami
Male artists have been putting photos of naked women on album covers since the 1960s and they range in quality and intent from provocative to irredeemably trashy. The tackiness scale is usually in perfect harmony with the music itself. Is it any surprise that the bloated, blatantly misogynistic 80s German band Scorpions have a whole medley of nude women selling their music that boasts lyrics like “The b-tch is hungry, she needs to tell/ So give her inches, and feed her well.” In the Soviet Union, Scorpions were elevated to god-like status because of cloying freedom anthems like "Wind of Change." Their album covers were censored so it was a shock to discover that a band that still makes many a Soviet immigrants‘ eyes tear had an album titled Virgin Killer, featuring a spread-eagled, nude 10 year old girl on the cover. It was banned everywhere except Germany (look it up at your own risk).
Scorpions, Deadly Sting: The Mercury Years
The objectification of nude women by male musicians rarely falls to the depths achieved by the Scorpions but there are a few worthy contenders, such as Sugar Ray with Lemonade and Brownies (1995) or Rollins Band with Nice (2001). Both images are crass, though the pornographic pose of Sugar Ray's image, its washed out, romantic color palette, the model's closed eyes — all make it the trashier of the two. Thankfully, it's mostly uphill from here. Roxy Music's Country Life (1974) teeters precariously on the edge of objectification but gets away with it because of the intense, Helmut Newton-like powerful gazes of the two women in transparent underwear. The photo is blatant in its tantalizing appeal and makes no flimsy art excuses and, I have to admit, I like this campy cover. Still, Roxy Music presents a curious dissonance. Several of the bands' albums feature scantily clad women in suggestive poses, but the music itself belies the setup of a cheap thrill — it is daring, complex and often genius.
Another one of my favorites is Pulp's This Is Hardcore (1998). Britpop's most sardonic and exuberant band didn't mince lyrics and wrote about romance and sex with unabashed detail. This Is Hardcore means exactly what it sounds like. Whatever the superficial similarities between this album cover and Sugar Ray's, the result is strikingly different. Combined with the title, the overt sexuality of the cover is intense and intentional, yet it's not the only theme depicted. The dramatic lighting and bold color, the woman's half-open eyes and the hand digging into the pillow with tension, all create an eerie effect reminiscent of David Lynch's cinematic universe. When released, advertising posters of the album were defaced on London subways with slogans such as “This Offends Women” and “This is Demeaning.” Such reactions completely missed the point. Sexuality on its own is never offensive nor demeaning. It's how the women engaged in a sexual act are depicted — presented to the viewer as passive, romanticized objects or charged with their own agency and power — that make the nuanced world of difference.
Clockwise: Sugar Ray, Lemonade and Brownies / Rollins Band, Nice / Roxy Music, Country Life / Pulp, This is Hardcore.
Alternative group the Pixies put a topless flamenco dancer on the cover of Surfer Rosa (1988) and obscured her with a dark vignette, sepia toning, burned out negative filter and photographic frame. Against all odds, despite the galling art gimmicks and with the help of great typography and design by the iconic 4AD label, it worked. It's a beautiful cover that holds in itself a promise of a treat that the music gleefully delivers. In contrast, the nude image by the renowned photographer Jan Saudek on the cover of For the Beauty of Wynona (1993), an album by Daniel Lanois (a singer-songwriter who sounds dangerously close to Bruce Springsteen) looks ridiculous. Why this woman is both naked and holding a small knife is a conundrum best left unpacked.
Pixies, Surfa Rosa / Daniel Lanoois, For the Beauty of Wynona
Female artists are no strangers to selling albums with nude images on the cover — the difference is that it's (almost) always a portrait of themselves. The intent of such images varies. For the Slits, a fierce all-girl punk band who appear topless and covered in mud on the cover of Cut (1979), the point seems to be about self-empowerment. They come off as warrior Amazons whose nudity is more adversarial than enticing. Other artists, like Britney Spears, mimic the way the male gaze often objectifies female bodies. In Glory (2016), she presents herself as a sacrificial sex-object and fully embraces the tired platitude that sex sells.
The Slits, Cut / Britney Spears, Glory
A few recent albums by women recreate the trope of objectification while declaring it a feminist victory. Selena Gomez was apparently talked into going fully nude for Revival (2015) and the outcome is low-key tragic. The cover's biggest mistake is that it tries to be “tasteful,” a most flawed ambition when it comes to nude photography. Selena is tastefully covering herself and the image is tastefully black and white but the result is both unsettling and sad. Looking at it makes me want to throw a robe over the singer and give her a hug. A similar pose by Lizzo on Cuz I Love You (2019), both fully nude and looking at the camera, has a an entirely different effect. Lizzo owns her space, and her body, and she confronts the viewer with a complex gaze. She is both vulnerable and completely in control. The image doesn't need art sauce or a show of modesty to excuse itself; the cover is unapologetic and gorgeous.
Selena Gomez, Revival / Lizzo, Cuz I Love You
Beyoncé went (almost) naked for her new album, Renaissance, and the image is being praised as an epitome of female self-empowerment. Ok, she is on a holographic horse and that's cool. But she is also dead-eyed and stone-faced while wearing a sexy Burning Man-style contraption. Beyoncé's cover fails because it plays it safe under the guise of being daring. The Lady Godiva persona has been used and reused so many times that even a holographic stallion can't save it. The pathos of the image is more reminiscent of the "I'm on a horse" Old Spice commercial that satirizes gender stereotypes than an expression of personal freedom (as claimed by Beyoncé).
Beyoncé, Renaissance / screenshot of Old Spice commercial
Here are two covers that are actually daring. Eartheater, an experimental artist who both croons and hollers like a banshee, is sending sparks out of her ass on the appropriately named Phoenix: Flames Are Dew Upon My Skin (2020). Self-aware, in control and with a fiery sense of humor, Eartheater achieves what Rosalia has tried and failed — a subversive female take on sexuality and objectification. Then there is the queen of them all, Grace Jones, on Island Life (1985), covered in oil and twisting herself into a shape no ordinary human should attempt. The cover is sexy while evading sexualization and strange while avoiding gimmickry. On top of it all, it is bitingly funny.
Eartheater, Phoenix: Flames Are Dew Upon My Skin / Grace Jones, Island Life
There also exists an elusive, party-of-one subset of male artists sexualizing themselves on album covers. Namely, Prince. His Lovesexy (1988) was removed from American shelves and covered in black paper to prevent outrage and fainting spells by sensitive shoppers. Prince is glorious, sitting on giant flowers and looking into the void with an evocative and vacant stare of a Pre-Raphaelite art model.
Prince, Lovesexy
The age of streaming made album covers more or less obsolete. That tiny thumbnail on Spotify is irrelevant (and censored if too risqué). Which is the reason I got myself a record player and a decent vinyl collection. Admittedly, I spend more time looking at the displayed cover of the moment than I do listening to it, but it restores the much-needed visual dimension to the music. Because even when the album cover is bad, it's still fun to look at and discuss (with a few exceptions — looking at you, Scorpions). Right now, Rosalia is on constant rotation and its strange cover is glaring at me from the record stand.
It's unfortunate when bad covers happen to good albums. But that doesn't make the music any worse, for the same reason that a beautiful photo of a naked woman can't make shitty music any better. Album design should be judged on its own merits — it's a visual art form like any other — just don't judge the album by its cover.
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