Popular Music Albums With Architecture On Its Cover

12 Aug 2022
By Deshal Shah

All art forms evoke emotions. A popularly prevailing opinion is that different art forms express different things. To translate the same into another medium is next to impossible. But what is often forgotten is that the collaboration of different mediums take place seamlessly into becoming a work of art.

Here are some popular album covers featuring iconic architecture.

Moshe Safdie’s Habitat 67

1. Stars: The North (2012)

The album cover shows Moshe Safdie’s Habitat 67. The arrangement of 354 prefabricated housing units, shows repetition as in a music composition. The album cover has a saturated image with technicolor effect to create nostalgia. The aerial view of the urban housing project shows the human life taking place on a sunny day.

CN Tower

2. Drake: Views (2016)

CN Tower appears as the album cover. The most anticipated reason for this, is Drake’s popularity in Canada. The cover’s juxtaposition of his own tiny, fragile corpus with the mighty tower shows the human impermanence, a feeling that is familiar to anyone who spends time contemplating iconic architecture.

Hector Guimard Metro Station Entrance

3. DJ Snake: Encore (2016)

The building shown in the cover is a Hector Guimard metro station entrance. He is known as one of the architects who brought Art Nouveau to France, a style in the decorative arts in the late 1800s and soon after was seen in architecture. It can be related to the artist being French. The art nouveau entrance in a background of desert give a sense of abstraction.

Battersea Power Station

4. Pink Floyd: Animals (1977)

The album cover features Battersea Power Station of West London. Pretty much the same as George Orwell’s classic novella Animal Farm. The flying pig at near the building shows the people as various animals in light of industrialisation. The lyrics like ‘pigs on the wing’ and the cover art conveys the idea.

Other albums with places you can actually visit are:

Lonerism by Tame Impala: Luxembourg Gardens, Paris.

The Home by Rudimental: Peace Carnival Mural on Dalston Lane in Hackney, a borough in East London.

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot by Wilco: Marina City by Bertrand Goldberg in Chicago.

SB#3 by Gramatik: Empire State Building by Shreve, Lamb, and Harmon in New York City.

Unknown Mortal Orchestra, ‘Unknown Mortal Orchestra’ – Petrova Gora Monument, Croatia

Architecture has affected and moulded the human lives. It is not a surprise that architecture has been a part of the music fraternity in many ways. An album to an artist/band, is similar to what a building is for an architect.Other albums with places you can actually visit are:

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