Your Career (In Artwork): Girl Groups

We appear to be having girl group fever at the moment... well, we're not. It's just a coincidence. We promise. I guess maybe you can see this artwork-orientated post as being in honour of the fact that Sky1 are showing the Girls Aloud tour in glittering HD or something. Anyway, let's get on with the postulating, shall we?

Let's start with Destiny's Child... 3 line-ups, countless hits, and some pretty unexceptional artwork. We suppose the covers for Survivor and Destiny Fulfilled are borderline iconic, but they don't immediately catch the eye. It could be worse, but the bland colouring, horrendous styling, and lack of a powerhouse logo leave the whole thing tasting distinctly of 'meh'. Disappointing when you consider how fantastic and varied the Child's back catalogue is.

On we move to Girls Aloud, who, until their recent break were our favourite working girlband working today in the working industry. Their music is some of the oddest, most experimental and progressive in the history of girl group music... songs with about 7 different choruses, all so catchy there's basically no verse, minute long introductions, impromptu tempo halvings, cheerleader chants for bridges, choral intros and samples, and a marriage to a production house so intent on throwing (as Alexis Petridis so wisely put it) "wildly disparate musical styles" together that you literally never know what you're going to get. Ibiza house? Clumsy guitar-driven funk? Cheesey euro pop? All mixed together?! Anyway, this would suggest some truly great artwork to go with some truly great music. But, no. Girls Aloud's artwork hints at something a hell of a lot cheesier and cheaper than the truth. It's never quite been right, even during the Tangled Up era, which produced some beautiful single artwork. The covers are certainly memorable, though, just perhaps not for the right reasons.

Onto the Spice Girls, the most ubiquitous and successful girl group ever. Unlike Girls Aloud, the Girls of Spice's music has never held pretensions of critical acclaim, but has instead been content to ride a glorious wave of unbeatably brilliant commercial pop. And considering this, it befits us to declare their artwork satisfyingly consistent, fantastically suited to their style of music and spectacularly iconic, considering its simplicity. Fabby.

Sugababes back catalogue contains some consistently spectacular pop, with the odd dud, so you'd expect their artwork to follow a similar patter, and you'd be right. There's something incredibly satisfying about seeing the following six album covers all lined up and next to each other. The bold print 'SUGABABES' grabs you immediately, and for the most part, the photography and styling seems effortless and cool. Off-kilter, memorable and cohesive, it ties their varied musical forays and multiple line-ups together perfectly.

Last, but not least we come to TLC. We'd be lying if we said we knew a lot about TLC's music, because we don't, but we'are aware that it's often wacky, soulful, inventive, colourful and alternately menacholic and perky, just like their dated but still fabulous artwork. Brillo pads.

And that's your lot.

Your Career (In Artwork): Male Pop Divas

Now for the second instalment of our feature... and onto 'Male Pop Divas', a bizarre demographic. We'll begin with Mr. MJ, a bizarre man.

For someone who is constantly referred to as the greatest pop act of all time, these album covers aren't ALL that iconic. They're quite good though, which sort of makes up for that. There's a lot of variety and not much consistency but they're not heinous which is a start.

Believe it or not, Marilyn Manson (yes we know it's a band, not just a person) is much more of a pop diva than you might think. There are a lot of glam rock anthems in his back catalogue, some very interesting musical styles and touches and, as evidenced below, some stonkingly good and iconic artwork. Whether you like him or not, you can't deny that his album covers have been a succession of bleak and arresting photos...

George Michael is better known by the younger generations as someone who consistently gets arrested for taking drugs or soliciting male prostitutes in public toilets, as opposed to someone releasing consistently good pop music. It's a shame, beause he's written some fantastic songs. We can't say the same for his artwork. It's very unexceptional isn't it?

Prince is somewhat of an enigma and has always embraced the ambitious and fantastical - unfortunately this often doesn't date very well, but nevertheless his collection of album covers look great next to each other. Colourful, imaginative and fantastical! Not a bad feat.

David Bowie is an innovator and visionary and this is reflected excellently in his diverse and visually intriguing set of artworks. So many iconic images here...

This Is Your Career (In Artwork): Pop Divas

We thought we'd try a new thing where we look at artists' careers through their album artwork. That's about it. It's a simple concept and we're going to dive right in. First we're going to look at Female Pop Divas (male ones are a whole different story) and we've chosen 5 of the biggest in terms of worldwide success and/or Icon Factor (a made-up factor that we made up).

To start with we're going to look at Mariah. Notice the muted pallet, the abundance of sepia and noire. The close ups. The soft focus. The pink. The sparkles. THE HAIR. Mariah has never been our cup of tea, and none of the writers for Shiny & New particularly like her, despite soft spots for certain songs of hers. We havent got much more to say about this other than that it reflects her melodramatic, yet essentially boring music. None of these album covers are particulary iconic... I mean, they're memorable or recognisable but not ICONIC. On top of that, most of them aren't actually that aesthetically pleasing, either.

Next we move on to the underdog of global female pop icons. Despite having had briefly HUGE success in the 80s, her continued success has been sputtering and sporadic. In terms of how iconic these covers are, well... they're NOT that iconic. If you asked most people of the street, or even most music fans, they'd struggle to remember what Cyndi's album covers look like. Nevertheless there's some beautiful photography, and the offbeat, colourful designs reflect her music and style as Madonna's twisted little sister brilliantly.

Which brings us to Koylie Minoigue (the Austroilian pronunciation). Kylie is the poor man's Madonna, and despite being massively famous worldwide, still isn't all that big in America. Despite finding Kylie weak, boring, emotionless, flaccid and puppet-like we have a MASSIVE penchant for her music, much of which is really brillo pads pop and electro. The typography on the album covers is ANYTHING but unique (has she ever stuck to ONE logo?) and some of the earlier coverart is EXECRABLE at best, but the bland but stylish images sort of capture the essence of Kylie, don't they?

Our next study is Janet Jackson, a deeply mysterious woman, who throughout her career has managed to flit her way between deeply brilliant and meaningful pop and soul, and completely forgettable tripe. Her album artwork sort of reflects this. There's not much consistency, but strangely they sit quite nicely next to eachother. It's quite odd to connect the artist who is sexily and broadly smiling like a catalogue model in some shots, with the more troubled looking lady inhabiting the more iconic shots (from Rhythm Nation, Control and The Velvet Rope). In terms of how Iconic these cover squares are... these are probably the most iconic yet. But that's because we haven't covered....

Madonna. The Queen of Queens. She needs no introduction. Her album artwork speaks for itself. Every single one of these album covers is Iconic, and not just because she's the most famous person on the planet. They are all brilliant album covers. The only consistency is that they're consistently brilliant and each one perfectly represents what the music on the album sounds like. One of our writers might complain that she doesn't stick with one logo, but when the rest of the design is this good, you really CANNOT complain.

Long Live The Queen!!!