The Libertines Album Cover Analysis

Before planning the album cover and leaflet for our production we have done some research into other indie artists and there covers and promo posters. This should help us get some ideas of the indie album covers as they are very differernt from the more popular music.

This is the album cover for The Libertines album released 2004 it was the second and last album from the band. At first glance the 2 men look wasted and are showing off their tattoos which say 'The Libertines' this shot of the 2 main protagonists was taking after a drunken night out and can symbolize the relationship between the band members which was very rocky. They were renound for the drink and drugs use and here in this image we can see dilated eyes, a cigarette in one of their hand. This obviously shows that they are very much about the party scene and that they like to enjoy themselves however dangerous it may be. The bands indie sound and genre is shown on this cover as they haven't followed the music industry stereotype and they did what they wanted to. This picture has been negatively criticized as it was said to be 'a bad influence on younger people'. Despite having negative reviews they kept the picture.
This obviously isn't the original picture and has been edited quite a bit. This may have been done to create the feel of maybe taking some kind of drug to affect the persons vision.We like the idea of the black background behind the lettering and this is something we are considering using on our album cover. I also like the effects of the editing. We were already originally thinking of editing our picture to a black and white effect but this is something we all have to discuss.

This is the back of the album from The Libertines. They have kept the same laid back style which is portrayed very strongly by the image. As stated before the image on the front cover was taken on a night out and was not a planned photo shoot, this looks like its been carried out onto the back as the boys are not posing for the photo and have given the bad boy image again. The font used looks extremely hand written and has not been used on the front cover. We feel that maybe the band should of used the same font as on the front as it looks like its a totally different album as the writing on the front is bold and striking and the text on the back is soft and kind of elegant.

Other Albums: