2018: Favorite Cover Art Humanist visions in intimate close-ups, candid portraits, and encrypted headshots

We celebrate the end of the year the only way we know how: through lists, essays, and mixes. Join us as we explore the music that helped define the year. More from this series

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Last year, I felt disillusioned with the steely transhumanism that much of my favorite music wallowed in. I’ll always appreciate the clattering, warped sounds that emerge from labels like PC Music and Hyperdub, but I felt hesitant to fully embrace their graphic design. Artwork entrenched in artificial intelligence and the uncanny valley is prescient and necessary, but curating an aesthetic that may one day be corporatized, spliced from my personal data and usurping my place in the workforce, felt somewhat masochistic. I wanted my selections to instead act as pixel windows through which to peek out from a mundane, digital routine and into a world that’s just as fleshy as our own (though maybe a little more fantastical).

In some ways, this year’s list furthers that humanist vision. Most noticeably, 36% of my picks are close-up portraits. Whether they feature a marionette replica of Brooklyn emcee Medhane, a black-and-white candid of Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker, or a sinister re-imagining of The Grinch, faces are displayed prominently in the foreground of many selections here. While artists are extending their mugs as a gesture of vulnerability/intimacy with their audiences, portraiture also acts as a vehicle to muscle one’s way into an attention economy that favors neon hair dye and Instagram hijinks. These covers achieve both ends with taste and originality. I think Earl Sweatshirt’s Some Rap Songs does this especially well: it feels as personal as a crazed picture a friend might drunkenly snap of you on a late Saturday night, but it maintains the tongue-in-cheek mystery of an Aphex Twin cover. The front-facing camera’s motion blur separates subject and observer, not unlike Earl’s stoic cadence and esoteric sense of humor.

2018’s list is nestled snugly in this divide: it’s a more personal crop, but it’s not shy about encrypting that closeness with humor or smatterings of maximalist color. For every headshot, there’s an anime-inspired cityscape or a striking work of abstract design. But even those selections imply a playful kinship between their creator and the viewing public. The cover of Woozles’ kidz bopz vol. 666 recalls the cluttered arrangements of an I Spy puzzle book. Inspecting the sleeve of Aphex Twin’s Collapse feels like dropping into Richard D. James’ private Minecraft server. If last year’s offerings are windows, consider these the artistic equivalent of the profile picture, the firm handshake, the salesman’s smile.

First impressions are everything.

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We celebrate the end of the year the only way we know how: through lists, essays, and mixes. Join us as we explore the music that helped define the year. More from this series

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