{"id":261861,"date":"2026-01-28T13:09:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T13:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/261861\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T13:09:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T13:09:08","slug":"who-shouldve-won-the-best-album-cover-grammy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/261861\/","title":{"rendered":"Who should\u2019ve won the Best Album Cover Grammy?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Long overdue, Best Album Cover will rightfully return at the 2026 ceremony this Sunday, and now exist alongside its former replacement. This year\u2019s nominees<\/a> include Tyler, The Creator\u2019s Chromakopia, Djo\u2019s The Crux, Bad Bunny\u2019s Deb\u00ed Tirar M\u00e1s Fotos, Perfume Genius\u2019 Glory, and Wet Leg\u2019s Moisturizer. Best Record Packaging will continue to celebrate innovation in the physical design of CDs and vinyl. How the restored prize will be judged 50 years later will be determined on 1 February. The role and form of the album cover have drastically changed since 1973, thanks to streaming and the digital universe we all inhabit. Case in point: none of this year\u2019s nominees have any typography on the covers \u2013 an essential design element for the category\u2019s earliest contenders. To market a product without a title or the artist\u2019s name?! Unfathomable 50 years ago and rare even a decade ago.<\/p>\n

Among the nominees, I personally would\u2019ve loved to see Amaarae\u2019s Black Star on the list for its beautiful homage to the Ghanaian flag (although controversially inspired by photographer Gabriel Moses\u2019 work<\/a>), along with Sabrina Carpenter\u2019s Man\u2019s Best Friend for some more uproar. As Will Ferrell famously lamented in Blades of Glory, \u201cNo one knows what it means, but it\u2019s provocative\u2026 it gets the people going!\u201d In retrospect, controversy is all Carpenter\u2019s cover has to offer, as opposed to Bad Bunny\u2019s Deb\u00ed Tirar M\u00e1s Fotos, one of this year\u2019s contenders.<\/p>\n

At first glance, the Puerto Rican popstar\u2019s eighth album cover appears quite simple: two white chairs set against an empty green landscape. But as Grammy-nominated writer Judy Cantor-Navas aptly points out on her Substack<\/a>, these fixtures are more than just plastic furniture \u2013 they are the Monobloc chair. \u201cParticularly potent in the Latin American landscape and social fabric,\u201d as Judy writes, you\u2019ll find them everywhere, from restaurants to beaches, sidewalks, churches, weddings, and porches. Deb\u00ed Tirar M\u00e1s Fotos has been described by many as Bad Bunny\u2019s ode to his home, and on the cover, the singer continues to pay respect to the infinite memories spent in these everyday objects. He proves that a minimalist image can carry cultural gravity for millions of fans. It\u2019s approachable. It\u2019s music for everyone.<\/p>\n

Which begs to ask, which covers might the Grammys have missed during this category\u2019s hiatus? Which musicians challenged genre norms, the cultures in which they were crafted, and ultimately, the very idea of what an album cover can be? We\u2019ve chosen one (or in some cases two) for each year of the past decade \u2013\u00a0let\u2019s examine the context in which these album covers were created and the visual artists who helped bring them to life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Long overdue, Best Album Cover will rightfully return at the 2026 ceremony this Sunday, and now exist alongside…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261862,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[146,85,46,409],"class_list":{"0":"post-261861","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261861\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}