A Snowy Night, a Purple Motorcycle, and George Michael's Reinvention
From records that took time to reveal themselves to artists determined to be understood differently, Ceruleanvinyl’s picks reflect a listener who rarely settles for a first impression.
Some listeners love to go through albums as if it were a race. Others, like Ceruleanvinyl (@ceruleanvinyl), prefer to sit with them and absorb them at their pace. Sometimes it's love at first listen, sometimes it's the fourth listen and it’s still not enough to fully understand the album.
Ceruleanvinyl takes on our June 21 to 23 prompts. The first prompt asks which album cover they think is very creative, followed by a reflection on how a single artistic choice can shape the way a record is perceived. The second turns toward a song tied to a moment they miss, one that has influenced their musical preferences for years now. The final prompt looks at an overlooked album within an artist’s discography, which leads to a reflection on an artist determined to be seen as more than the image that helped launch his career.
Which album cover do you think it’s very creative?
Purple Rain has always been one of those albums I thought had such an interesting and creative album cover. Prince simply could have made this album cover just a cropped version of the photo featured on the album cover. But he decided to give a unique kind of album cover where we could see the whole photo top to bottom. Also the selection of the background with the floral sort of wallpaper gives it a very dated look to it. But in a good way where people could look at it and almost instantly be able to tell what era that album comes from. Also the photograph used in the middle of the album cover was very creative itself. The photo shows prince on a motorcycle in what looks like an alley, with a woman standing in the doorway with her silhouette lit up by yellow light in the background.
This photo to me conveys an emotion of moving on from someone or something, the title track also supports this with the theme it follows of reminiscing on something but also acknowledging that we as human beings must move on and persevere. I think the creativeness of this album cover when looked at in detail can lead to a lot of thoughts and questions about what the album’s messages are.
What’s a song that reminds you of a moment you miss?
Leading up to first hearing “Unison” by Björk, I tried to get into Björk by starting with her album Vespertine. I listened to the first 3 songs but I wasn’t really feeling it so I decided maybe her music just wasn’t for me. Until one night last year in January it was maybe close to 1am and it was snowing outside and I decided to give this album another listen. I started to love the album as each song went on it was like a catharsis for me.When the song “Unison” started playing, which was the closing track on the album, something felt magical about the song. When it got toward the part of the song when Björk is hitting high notes and the instrumentation is becoming even more spiritual sounding, I was looking out the window as it was snowing and thinking how much this experience is going to form my music taste for the rest of my life.
If this song didn’t exist on the album I might not have felt the desire to continue listening to the rest of her discography.
Björk would go on to become one of my top 5 favorite artists of all time because of this song. If this song didn’t exist on the album I might not have felt the desire to continue listening to the rest of her discography. I also adore the uncertainty of this song. It talks about being complete or being alright with how you feel or where you are in life or a certain scenario you’re in. But the vocal delivery Björk gives on this song leaves the listener feel like she still has more to say. Implying that Björk herself hasn’t completely decided whether her personal or musical journey is complete yet. I think this also flows very well into the themes on the following album she released after it. I would do anything to hear “Unison” for the first time again and to experience that almost sort of musical transformation I had.
Which album feels overlooked in their discography?
Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 by George Michael is undoubtedly his most underrated album released to date. Despite this album having popularity within its singles, it’s really only remembered for producing one of George’s greatest hits “Freedom ’90” but there’s so much more to this album than what meets the eye. This album came just 3 years after the highly successful debut album Faith and George wanted to put down the heartthrob lover boy image and create provoking songs about society and prejudice. This album was very successful outside of the United States but even then, still remained the underrated masterpiece it is.
On this record, George takes his lyricism to a deeper social level than he had ever before done. One of the highlights from this album being “Mother’s Pride” which is about the Gulf War. This song is about how mothers would have to experience their son’s body being brought home after dying in the war and the grieving process that comes with that. This song can really be applied to any war that has happened. George even pushes his message further with the album cover. He chooses to not put himself on the album cover but rather a crowd of people. He does this because as he is moving away from the heartthrob image he wants to the music to be solely judged by how it sounds, without prejudice of his looks. I think the underlying themes, messages, beautiful instrumentation, and lyrics all make this one of his greatest albums and I think it should get more attention.
For Ceruleanvinyl, music is rarely a one-time experience. It changes with distance, with repetition, with time. Albums are revisited until they settle into place, or continue shifting into something new. Sometimes they don’t fully reveal themselves until much later, after enough time has passed to hear them differently.
There’s a sense of patience in the way they listen, where attention is given freely and nothing is rushed into understanding. Records are treated less like individual releases and more like worlds worth stepping into, each one unfolding gradually rather than all at once. Meaning is not expected immediately, but allowed to surface whenever it’s ready. It’s a way of listening built on return rather than urgency, where even familiar albums can feel slightly different each time they come back around.
A creative listener whose taste stretches from Bob Dylan to Nine Inch Nails, always willing to spend more time with an album, an artist, or an idea before deciding what to make of it.
