4 cover stories in our archive
Behind the Covers' archive includes 4 album covers documented under the "britpop" design theme, all from the 1990s. These covers sit within the alternative, rock, indie tradition and feature work by Ash, Suede, Oasis, Blur. Each entry below includes the cover artwork, the designers and photographers behind it, and a short story about the visual choices that defined the release.
Ash's 1977 cover takes a gritty street photograph by Dutch photographer Ed van der Elsken and turns it into a disorienting mirrored cityscape. Brian Cannon of Microdot directed the sleeve, extending the same painstaking visual sensibility he brought to Oasis into the debut of three Northern Irish teenagers whose album would go to No. 1 in Britain.
Suede's Coming Up cover turned three models on a striped mattress into a fluorescent hallucination. Brett Anderson brought Peter Saville into the project; Saville and fashion photographer Nick Knight shaped the imagery, Howard Wakefield designed the sleeve, and digital paintbox work pushed the photograph toward the lurid, ambiguous glamour that matched Suede's brighter 1996 reinvention.
The living room belonged to guitarist Bonehead's house in Didsbury, and everything you see—from the TV to the champagne bottle—was meticulously arranged by designer Brian Cannon to create rock and roll's most perfectly cluttered domestic scene.
Two greyhounds tear down a track on the cover of Blur's Parklife, and not a single band member is in sight. The image is a 1988 sports photo of a race at Romford Stadium, lifted from a picture library and reframed by designers who treated Blur like a product on a betting-shop window.