Songs in Full Colour (2024)
Vinyl Design as a Psychological Companion to the Listening Experience
My collection had grown to an impressive 214 music cassettes. At my Camelot Music employee discount, I could purchase a brand new release of the week at anywhere from $6.40 all the way down to $4.15. I had become a member of the Columbia Record & Tape Club three times (Mark Steele, Richard Steele, and M. R. Steele), and I now owned everyone from Pseudo Echo to Psychedelic Furs to Information Society. When I carried my three handled, double-sided, snap-shut cassette carriers into a party, everyone knew the dance floor was open. Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (the band’s spelling, not mine), a-ha, Dev1ce, Simple Minds - each of my cassettes queued up to the most electric song on the album, I was the deejay hit of my neighbor Ronson’s gathering - that is, until someone would ask me what the lyrics to that last song were.
I would scramble for a flashlight and unfold the liner notes. My heart pounding like New Order’s “Bizarre Love Triangle,” wondering if this was her idea of a pick-up line. God, the writing’s so small. And such poor printing. Half the words had been smeared by my sweaty thumb after “You Spin Me Right Round (Baby Right Round) Like a Record Baby (Right Round (Round Round)).” What song am I looking for? She would coo the question like we were already on the ride home from a date. Cheap Trick’s “The Flame.” I would try to stop my hand from quivering. I would spend the next seven minutes attempting to read the tiny writing. By the time I gave up, Falco was Rocking Amadeus and the girl in question was on the other side of the room chatting up Ronson (all the girls eventually chatted up Ronson). Somewhere in the waiting, she had said: You should buy CD’s.
My collection had grown to an impressive 363 CD’s that now circled the top 8-inches of my room on tiny shelves that allowed them to hover and surround alphabetically like a chorus of angels, had they been arranged by a first grade teacher. I had everything from PM Dawn to Counting Crows to 10,000 Maniacs. I had learned to keep my CD’s high after the one time my friend took great pleasure in strewing my music all about my room (after she invested an hour putting the wrong CD’s in the wrong cases). Why do I have OCD again? I forget. I shared a house with four post-college roommates and we would host weekly Spaghetti Thursdays where the tunes would spin in-between new episodes of Seinfeld and The Simpsons. There was also a ferret wandering around somewhere. Someone would ask me what the lyrics to that last song were.
I knew the band was US3 and the song “Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia),” but all the liner notes had been slipped into mismatched CD cases with the wrong CD. “Well, the case is Spin Doctors, but the CD itself is George Benson while the liner notes are Nevermind. Does that help at all?” It was not unlike a jigsaw puzzle from hell. Eventually, she would wander off wondering what happened to her plate of spaghetti (the ferret took it) and I realized that if my music collection was going to be both my calming, stimming hobby of choice as well as my social introduction to others that did the heavy lifting, I needed a medium far less ruinable, more aesthetically interesting - and with a significantly larger font.
Enter the Vinyl Revolution.
Now, I know full well that the digital revolution came first, but I have never been without a tangible, physical music collection. I feel that it is completely unfair to the artists who attempt to make a living out of their music to experience it ONLY digitally, where the artists are given no-to-practically-no residuals depending upon the streaming service. Yes, I use streaming as much as anyone else a) to sample new music and see if it is something I would be interested in devoting my time and ears toward and b) as the easiest way to access the music I love and listen to constantly. But, IF I love that music and listen to it constantly, I also insist on buying the album on vinyl so that the artist is actually making some profit off of my enjoyment.
I grew up in vinyl’s first heyday, having been the only format of distributed music other than the failed-attempt 8-track cassette throughout the 70’s. Nothing was better than laying on the floor stomach-down on my brother Brad’s shag carpet, kicking up my hind legs, and leaning in to absorb every liner note, photo, and lyric while I listened straight through the album first-track-to-last. Studying every last detail on the covers of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band or Dark Side of the Moon as I let the music sink in. Who would want anything smaller?
Come the early-to-mid 80’s, the portability of cassette tapes were taking the world by storm. You could play them in your car, or carry them around with a walkman. Cassettes were a significant decline in quality from vinyl, but convenience beat listener purity. However, if you lived in a hot state like Georgia (which I did), it was not uncommon for cassettes left inside your car to warp on the dashboard.
The CD began to become a serious competitor in 1989, and had all but eradicated cassette sales by 1995. The CD was just as compact as the cassette, but sturdier and - most importantly - a step up in quality, even from vinyl. It could also chop vegetables. Newer cars either came with both cassette and CD players, or no cassette player at all. CD’s also allowed the listener to find the desired track instantly, a feature that had never before been possible.
But, it was only a decade before the distribution model would change again (four times in 30 years) as illegal share services like Napster, then digital download services like iTunes, then subscription services like Spotify became the choice of listeners by an insane measure one could only call industry domination. Physical sales of any medium at all began to completely disappear for the sake of consumer ease - but at great cost to the musicians themselves. To paraphrase Dire Straits, “music for nothing and your chicks for free.”
Over time, an interesting sentiment began to spread like wildfire, and it was oft expressed something akin to “Is it strange that I want to hold my music?” The invisibility of a song - its intangibleness, had never been so crystal clear than it was now, in the age of digital - where there was no tactile part of the experience left at all. You could perhaps ruminate over the art direction of the album cover in its postage stamp-sized icon on your phone, but that was about it. You could look up the lyrics on your favorite band’s website, but back then, they were often fan-run and inaccurate. Otherwise, music was to be absorbed, but not carried. Not handled between friends at a sleepover. Never brought to work for a friend to borrow. No longer dug out of the closet as a surprisingly emotional reminder of who you once were. The entire listening experience had become hands-off.
So, what’s a generation to do? What else? Ape the medium their grandparents embraced. That’s why vinyl is back, baby - and back bigger than ever. Extravagant packaging, expanded liner notes and photography, hordes of extras, and best-of-all: colored vinyl.
What?! When was this deemed possible? Are you telling me that, for thirty years, all vinyl records were nothing but black when there was all this ROYGBIV possibility? That the Beatles White Album was black? Purple Rain? R.E.M’s Green? Taylor Swift’s Red? Everything by Weezer? All black. This was certainly an exciting development. I wonder if it would be mishandled?
I am now the proud owner / manager of 865 vinyl records. I know. They’re catalogued. The collection includes 18 Beatles (the White Album is still black, but “Greatest Hits 1967-1970” is blue), 28 Coldplay (David’s favorite - includes 14 LE Singles, LE meaning Limited Edition), 20 Bob Dylan (with two bootlegs and three RSD exclusives, RSD meaning Record Store Day), 21 Paul McCartney (with or without Wings), and the entire vinyl catalogs of Billy Joel (17), The Killers (10), Bruno Mars (4), John Mayer (9), The Police (9), Bruce Springsteen (33), Sting (18), and of course U2 (67 vinyl records, including 15 RSD Exclusives and several dozen LE).
Of course, that doesn’t touch newer fare like T. Swift, Vampire Weekend, Billie Eilish, Harry Styles, Foo Fighters, Olivia Rodrigo, Haim, and AJR. Nor does it make mention of my 80’s trove. I’m guessing I’m the only acquaintance of yours who owns five Howard Jones vinyls. Five. Living proof that Things Can Only Get Better.
I cannot help that I love what I love and I have grown over the years to no longer be ashamed of it. I can admit that I own (all on vinyl) Bryan Adams and The Cars. I own a LOT of Chicago and Phil Collins and Toto and Mike + the Mechanics and Duran Duran. SO MUCH Duran Duran. I own and regularly listen to Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers. A solid afternoon for me is listening through all of Fountains of Wayne’s discography.
Now, I won’t pull punches. I also have Fleetwood Mac and Joni Mitchell and Boston and Jeff Buckley and Miles Davis and Donald Fagan and Carole King and The Eagles and Steely Dan and Peter Gabriel and Chet Baker and John Coltrane and Ella Fitzgerald and Bill Withers. All the greats that make one well-rounded.
My only point in the specifics of my collection is to show that I collect everything from the classic to the ridiculous - and ALL of them have embraced the concept of colored vinyl. However, I don’t know that any of them are using it intentionally. At this point, I beg you to ask Mark, whatever do you mean so that I can excitedly nerd out over introducing you to the Psychology of Color.
Not all experts agree on every single detail of the psychology of color, but they all play within the same ballpark. The psychology of color, in short, means that the colors that surround you subconsciously impact your experience. The same way - oh, let me think of something else that might do that. OH. Music does.
For instance, one might consider gray as a solid choice to paint the bedroom of a teenage boy. As the description goes, grey is neutral and mature, bringing a sense of quiet - BUT grey is also drab and depressing, which can have serious adverse affects on a growing boy. A much better choice is blue, which brings the calmness and the peace one might hope for with grey, but only has the downside of sadness. Sadness is okay - because sadness is an emotion, which builds the individual. Depression is the pressing down of emotion, which crushes the individual. On the other hand, never - never ever paint a child’s bedroom yellow. It is considered the worst color if you want the person in it to calm down and go to sleep. Rather, paint a play room or school room yellow, which brings electricity to the brain as well as stimulating fresh, new ideas.
Now, how does this psychology of color impact vinyl? You would think the artist’s representation would take great care to make certain the aesthetic matches: that the psychology of the color spinning is at least compatible with the experience of listening to the music. For instance, My Chemical Romance should NOT colorize the vinyl for “The Black Parade”. If Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” is yellow, we have an aesthetic problem. It’s just as important that the color used on vinyl not be too obvious: “Ebony & Ivory” should not be black-and-white, nothing by Taylor Swift should be gold, and Johnny Cash’s “At Folsom Prison” should not be a splatter of red over black bars.
The truth is, distributed music is finally back to the tactile, full-sensory experience that it used to be with bright color and design spinning before you as well as a plethora of liner notes, lyrics, photography, and extras. Take Coldplay, for instance.
Coldplay has, over the years, paid meticulous attention to the packaging of their music. Beginning with 2011’s “Mylo Xyloto,” the band has focused, not only on the look of their design, but - more than any other modern musician - the feel. Sturdier cardboard, thicker spines and booklets and, more often than not, cut-out lettering into the cover so that the inner sleeve is part of the color palette. They used this old-school arts-and-crafts approach (to great aesthetic effect) on 2011’s “Mylo Xyloto,” 2015’s “A Head Full of Dreams,” and 2021’s “Music of the Spheres” (see photo above). And where the band had been tempted to directly match the color of the vinyl with the packaging on releases like 2014’s “Ghost Stories” and 2019’s “Everyday Life,” they took riskier approaches that paid off with Xyloto (color cloud spiral, top left), AHFOD (translucent cherry, top center), and Spheres (translucent deep purple, bottom right). These choices were surprises, and therefore colors that made you think as well as feel as the music (all highly-produced walls of sound) invaded your senses. Each color promises a party, but one that might easily be crashed by death and all his friends. They are joyous colors that pop, but in darker hues that suggest austere moments will partner with all this frivolity, so celebrate with caution.
With her own unique approach, there’s the inarguable world champion of selling music. Who am I kidding? The world champion of selling ANYTHING, Taylor Swift.
Taylor Swift’s vinyl color palette has a wholly different psychology to it, because when you are buying a Taylor Swift album, you are buying in to a tribe more than a set of songs. Yes, the art direction focuses very intentionally on the specific work pressed onto that one vinyl circle, but it carries much more weight than that because each color also has to blend in with the aesthetic of Taylor herself. Her vinyl colors of choice actually say less about the album at hand than they do about Taylor’s own career trajectory. In fact, for the past two albums, Taylor has offered up eight vinyl color options for each album so that you can tailor (pun) the experience to your own tastes, therefore building an even more committed tribe. At least, this is what the marketing suggests. What actually happens is that the fan in her need-it-all obsession with Taylor, purchases all eight for no other reason than they exist. You see? The world champion of selling anything. The one Taylor Swift title that only comes in one color? 2012’s “Red.” It comes in black.
Take a look at the photo of a sampling of Taylor’s collection above. Only one of those vinyl looks like it doesn’t belong in the group. It’s the picture disk with her face emblazoned across it, and that particular album (2017’s “Reputation”) was released by Big Machine - you know, the label who sold all of her masters to Justin Bieber’s manager Scooter Braun? It’s the only vinyl of the bunch that hasn’t yet been replaced by a “Taylor’s Version,” meaning it’s the only vinyl in the picture where Taylor did not have control over the design. You can see for yourself that if you remove that one vinyl, the rest look like a multi-pack of Sephora blush or lipstick for the savvy T Swift fan.
But, it isn’t only the current artist who is leaping onto the color vinyl bandwagon. Some of the great classics are rebuilding out their archive of work with a more compelling aesthetic. One of the first to dive in fully is none other than Sir Paul McCartney.
Sony Music Publishing controls the rights to most of the Beatles catalog, making it difficult for the surviving members to have a say in packaging, but Sir Paul has retained the rights to all of his own music since the Beatles, including his work with Wings and The Fireman (his two collaborations with Youth). Sir Paul has never shied away from new approaches to making and distributing music, so repackaging his catalog in new deluxe editions felt very on-brand for him. If you’ve ever experienced this 82-year-old icon live in concert, then you know that he is two things: 1) the electric, full-of-youth, ultra-positive individual he seems in song and 2) an incredibly eclectic enigma of a songwriter who you can never pin down stylistically. Sir Paul’s vinyl color palette expresses those two characteristics well. They are oft vibrant and unexpectedly hot colors, while at the same time, diverging wildly from any sort of consistent theme. Taylor Swift’s color palette seems like an intensely curated handful of the best-blending crayons chosen from 10,000 options. Sir Paul’s feels like he stuck his hand in, grabbed a dozen at random and declared “Perfect, baby!” - and yet, album for album, it works.
We are finally at the place where the digital revolution allows for the purchasing of an artist’s product, because digital music is now where the fans taste the album rather than swallow it whole. It is where they will keep it handy, like a laminated card in the wallet, but it is not where they showcase it.
The truth is, it required the digital revolution and the complete eradication of physical mediums of popular music in order to bring back demand for elaborate vinyl packaging, but now it is the trend. I’m not surprised. A song is a mystery - and a mystery begs clues to be pored over. Now, vinyl records are the #1 money-making medium when it comes to either new or classic music, and elaborate colors and designs on the vinyl itself have become a major selling point. An album is once again not only art for the ears, but art to be displayed on the shelf of the wall - not to mention the turntable. It’s the full-sensory tactile experience it was always supposed to be. Now, if I could only get that employee discount back.
Next: "THE COMPLETE ORACLE (1989-1991)" A Primer for the trove of 43 comedic articles Mark Steele wrote for his college newspaper. Only in the Mark Steele Archive.
I too have an extensive record collection going and have started cataloging them al through the Disc Dogs app. Have barely started and I am up to 250 or so...many more to go. It would drive you nuts to know that they are not all in alphabetical order. I could geek out all day talking about vinyl!