An album cover and music video are often separate entities with separate imagery. The artist might appear in both, but they're usually doing different things, or at least wearing different clothes. However, these six music videos ended up incorporating imagery directly from the album cover.
1. Tom Tom Club - "Genius of Love" (1981)
The colorfully animated music video for the Tom Tom Club's classic single "Genius of Love" was based on the work of New York pop artist James Rizzi, who also designed the cover of the Tom Tom Club's eponymous debut album, where the single was first featured.
2. Bruce Springsteen - "Born in the USA" (1984)
The cover of Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA is one of the most iconic in rock history, and proved to be so popular that Springsteen recreated it at the end of the video for the album's title track. Based on the look on Springsteen's face, though, he probably felt that recreating the album's cover photograph was both tacky and tacked-on, as it doesn't really have anything to do with the rest of the video.
3. The Go-Go's - "Vacation" (1982)
The music video for the Go-Go's single "Vacation" predictably featured imagery of the band doing vacation-y things, such as sitting around in an airport and water skiing. The image of the five Go-Go's water skiing in pink dresses and tiaras would also be used for the cover of the Vacation LP.
4. Nirvana - "Come As You Are" (1991)
Though the video for Nirvana's "Come As You Are" doesn't feature any naked babies in a swimming pool like the cover of Nevermind, it does make extensive use of water imagery, including an ominous handgun floating around in a swimming pool, instead of a baby (reflecting the lyric "and I swear that I don't have a gun," which took on an eerie cast after Kurt Cobain's suicide).
5. The Rentals - "Friends of P." (1995)
The music video for the Rentals' debut single "Friends of P." consists largely of frontman Matt Sharp singing directly into the camera, dressed in a suit and tie and filmed in grainy black and white. The band's debut album Return of the Rentals, which features "Friends of P.," would use a still from this video as its cover.
6. The Jesus and Mary Chain - "Just Like Honey" (1985)
The cover of the Jesus and Mary Chain's debut album Psychocandy is simply a photograph of guitarists Jim and William Reid in front of a wall with the album's title painted on it, which appears to be the very same place where the video for album opener "Just Like Honey" was filmed.
What other music videos feature imagery from the album cover? Let us know in the comments section!
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