Album Art

Album art redesigns — all work is conceptual and in no way affiliated with the artists represented

Taking “sour” in a literal direction, I introduced the lemon as the central imagery for the album art. My main inspirations were 2000’s pop punk album art paired with the Californian surfer aesthetic as the album is pop rock in genre but consistently strings images of the west coast throughout the album.

The desert imagery is taken and repurposed from the original artwork. The floating television full of static is in direct conflict with its surroundings. That idea is reiterated on the other side of the sleeve with the band members silhouettes eclipsed by glowing static— to say what is truly obvious, is that nothing is obvious.

Pure Heroine is an album that uses vivid and often violent metaphors to, in my opinion, describe adolescence and fame and how they intersect for the artist. I took the title “heroine” and canonized the artist by way of Joan of Arc, using her pseudonym as a mask to further illustrate the personas we use as armor in our youth. Conversely I used the title of the work “Pure Heroine” as the hilt of her sword to establish her music is her weapon of choice.

I was greatly influenced by Musgraves’ initial announcement for this album and felt the artistic direction was clearly inspired by Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet. I took a collaged approach to this as I wanted the main imagery to be graphic. The flaming heart crying sapphire tears impaled by swords, are layers of reference to the catholic imagination, the tarot, as well as the avant garde art direction of Lurhmann’s film style.

When listening to Malone’s album, themes of fantasy are paired with visions of the west coast as an avatar for the wild west. I drew on John Wayne and the flamboyance of the cowboy as well as allusions to druidic imagery. I aimed to mesh opulence and dark epic fantasy to sell the fantastical ideals of Hollywood illustrated by Malone in the album.

Vide Noir paints pastoral images of the void, and I wanted the album cover to be a soft introduction to the album. Creating a doorway from the linework of an emerald, a marriage of two reoccurring themes in the album, as a way to invite listeners into the work. The image of the stream being mirrored and ripped through on the inverse side of the sleeve is to illustrate the fallacy of the idyllic photograph.