Cover Art - Kanye West and Led Zeppelin

by Jeremy Barr

Music CD cover art is a great way for artists to be creative about their CD’s and to express different talents in art. They have to use their imagination to successfully express music with visual art. A couple of examples of this creativity and diversity are Kanye West with his album Graduation and Led Zeppelin with his album Mothership. These styles are very different, so let’s see if the covers will have anything to do with what is going on in the songs on the CD!

Kanye West’s music covers many different genres such as rock/pop, R&B, urban soundtrack, rap and def jam. Kanye is a very famous man who has won Grammys and topped the charts with some of his songs, such as “Gold Digger” and “Jesus Walks.” He is quite talented because he uses these different genres of music to create a very unique style. Kanye’s most recent CD, Graduation, has cover art that features animals lifting into the air and throwing their caps, symbolising a graduation from school. They seem very excited because that is the atmosphere of graduation – excitement about the freedom to fly away from home, as the bear is doing in the picture. In this CD, the music relates to graduation in many varying ways, such as the song named “Good Life”; when you graduate, your simple life is supposed to become the good life! Other songs feature different aspects of graduation, such as “Can’t Tell Me Nothing” and “Drunk and Hot Girls.” When you graduate, you feel that no one can tell you what to do, and a whole new social (partying) life awaits in college. The colors on this cover are really bright, and they go great together because they are loud and attention-grabbing. The cover perfectly relates to the subject of the CD because it signifies the excited atmosphere and bright future after graduation.

Led Zeppelin’s music is really just focused on Rock/Pop, and Rock only. This is a very famous group which has won numerous awards, often being referred to as “legends of rock.” Led Zeppelin topped the charts with the song “Stairway to Heaven,” which featured on their CD Mothership. The front of the CD has a speakerbox shaped like a house, with a big blimp hovering over it in a “mothership”-like fashion. The blimp, therefore, is the symbol for the mothership, which is landing in the house of music, meaning that Led Zeppelin is the origin of great rock and that they are there to take over the home of rock music. The colors on the cover are red and black, a stark contrast that alludes to a mothership coming from outer space. Some of the songs, such as “Stairway to Heaven,” are directly related to the subject of the CD because the mothership is like a way to get to heaven, where they are hailed as being the gods of rock music.

These two groups have very unique styles and some differences when it comes to music subjects, but they both have reasons for their covers within their songs. CD covers really reveal what the subject of the songs will be, which can be the reason it is appealing to a potential buyer. Both Kanye’s and Zeppelin’s CDs are available at local music stores, and are a great way to enjoy nationally recognized artists in your own town.