Album Covers featuring Yawnsomely Literal Cover Art in regards to said album's title.

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Herbie Mann: Stone Flute. Great album. Everyone sounds stoned.

You can be sure this isn't a photo of the first time Coltrane was going to play live at the village vanguard. Alice and Rashied look like some tourist couple who've stumbled into some sidewalk wax museum.

http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/drd100/d108/d10892b99cw.jpg

"Bleach" features no bleach, "Cartoon Heroes" features no cartoon heroes (at least none I recognize),

Also, the "Water Babies" cover is actually an ironic twist on the Victorian concept; "Danse Macabre" is similar, a hipster reinvention of the graphic tradition. "Moving Pictures" is not "yawnsomely literal" because it employs a pun. Ditto "Rocks"--ok, it might not be Shakespeare, but it is sure trying harder than "The Raven."

Looks like AC/DC are the champions here!

"Cartoon Heroes" features no cartoon heroes (at least none I recognize)
If you are saying that Aqua aren't cartoon heroes, you haven't watched music videos for the past eight years.

"Bleach" features no bleach
Well, the photo is reversed, or, in a sense, bleached. Good enough for ya?

Note "in a sense"--i.e. not literal. Figurative. I would say that it doesn't even work very well, since the usual figurative sense of "bleach" is to whiten/make pale/washed out. But this image is simply a negative, with blacks as well as whites.

"Cartoon Heroes" features no cartoon heroes (at least none I recognize)
If you are saying that Aqua aren't cartoon heroes, you haven't watched music videos for the past eight years.

Evidently not enough of them, since I have no idea what you're talking about (and have never heard of Aqua till this thread). But I'm guessing they're actually a band. Either you're joking (i.e. it's not literal) or they are only cartoon heroes in a certain sense, or to a certain viewership, in which case "yawnsomely literal" is not going to cover it.

I also heartily object to the Betty Davis above--where is the literalness there...

Well, that explains a lot. How old are you? Are you telling me that you don't remember 'Barbie Girl'? Or 'Dr. Jones'??? Or The lawsuit against them from Mattel Inc.? The girl sings in a squeaky voice and the guy growls along. Cartoon Heroes if there ever were any.

Re. the 'Bleach' thing: The photo is clearly a tiresome and obvious pun on the title. That's yawningly literal enough for me.

Re. the literal thing - are you then saying that the Tom Waits cover doesn't apply either, because the people sitting in the diner are not actual hawks as in the bird?

You're right, at a certain point the figurative comes into play in all of language, nothing is purely literal. But I still see significant differences here.

Waits: "nighthawk" commonly means night owl, the album depicts people in a diner, presumably late at night. The idea is, teh title is "Nighthawks at the diner," let's show some nighthawks at a diner.

Joel: He wants to call the album Glass Houses, the suits say, great! Let's show you ready to throw a stone at, see, an actual glass house! Because that's the saying, you know! So we make the symbolism literal! Cool!

AC/DC: the phrase "Blow up your video" makes no sense at all, but the image is of a TV, with Angus Young on it, who could conceivably be in a vide being shown on that TV, and the TV is blowing up. It is a very lame attempt at a literal depiction of a silly idea.

In each case there is a phrase that is depicted visually in concrete terms.

Aqua: the thing is, they don't look like they're in a cartoon in that picture! I haven't seen the printed album, maybe it's different, but in the jpeg it looks like a photograph of the band. THey could have had them dressed as Superman, Power Rangers, whatever. So to see them as "cartoon heroes" I guess you're saying you need to rely on things you've seen in the past, subtexts, in which case we're clearly beyond the literal.

Nirvana: You're right, the image attempts to make a visual pun on the name. They don't say, "ok, bleach, let's show some bleach"--instead they think, how can we make a visual analog for "bleaching"? Let's use a negative image of the band performing live. YOu find this obvious--I don't since it inverts shades rather than erasing (bleaching) them--but literal it ain't.

http://img.epinions.com/images/opti/9f/bb/84842-resized200.JPG

spot on!