The most recognisable soul album covers

Soul has a stranger relationship with album art than any other genre, because for its first decade the album barely mattered. The business ran on singles. Sleeves were assembled quickly, often from a studio portrait and a colour block, because nobody expected anyone to study them.

Then, around 1970, that changed completely. Here are nine covers that show both halves of the story.

1. Marvin Gaye — Let's Get It On (1973)

Let's Get It OnMarvin Gaye · 1973

A tight portrait in a knitted cap, warm brown grading, almost no background. The palette alone dates it to within a couple of years — that specific warm brown is the seventies soul signature.

2. Stevie Wonder — Innervisions (1973)

InnervisionsStevie Wonder · 1973

Illustrated rather than photographed: a profile with light streaming from the head out across a landscape. The moment a soul sleeve stopped advertising the singer and started arguing a point.

3. Curtis Mayfield — Super Fly (1972)

Super FlyCurtis Mayfield · 1972

Film-poster composition in orange and brown, figures arranged in a scene rather than posed for a camera. The soundtrack sleeve as narrative.

4. Aretha Franklin — Lady Soul (1968)

Lady SoulAretha Franklin · 1968

A sixties studio portrait done properly — flat colour behind, direct gaze, name in confident type. The template that Motown and Atlantic both used, executed at the top of its form.

5. Otis Redding — Otis Blue (1965)

Otis BlueOtis Redding · 1965

Famously not a photograph of Otis Redding at all. A blonde model against a blue ground, a decision made by a label nervous about how a Black artist's face would sell in 1965 — and a piece of album art history worth knowing about rather than admiring.

6. Al Green — Let's Stay Together (1972)

Let's Stay TogetherAl Green · 1972

Soft focus, warm light, a smile rather than a pose. Where Marvin Gaye's sleeves brood, Green's invite, and the artwork does that work before the needle drops.

7. Isaac Hayes — Hot Buttered Soul (1969)

Hot Buttered SoulIsaac Hayes · 1969

A shaved head shot from above against black, chains visible, no name on the front. Confrontational in a way nothing else on a soul shelf was in 1969.

8. The Temptations — Cloud Nine (1969)

Cloud NineThe Temptations · 1969

The group in a psychedelic colour treatment rather than matching suits. If you want the exact moment Motown's house style broke, it is somewhere around this sleeve.

9. Stevie Wonder — Songs in the Key of Life (1976)

Songs in the Key of LifeStevie Wonder · 1976

A sunburst wash and a profile, more like a devotional image than a pop portrait. By this point the artist is designing the object, not being photographed for it.

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Why the early ones are hard

If you play the soul collection and find the sixties records much harder than the seventies ones, that is not you.

Motown in particular ran a house style: studio portrait, flat saturated background, group arranged in a diagonal line with the tallest at the back. That consistency was a commercial strength — the records looked like a series, the way a book imprint does — but it means a corner of one sixties Motown sleeve looks a great deal like a corner of another.

The seventies sleeves are individually designed, so they are individually identifiable.

A few shortcuts that work across the genre:

• Flat, saturated colour behind a portrait — almost certainly the sixties.
• Warm brown and orange grading — early seventies, near enough regardless of label.
• Illustration rather than photography — 1970 or later, essentially always.

Browse the whole soul archive, or take on ten of them in Genre mode.