The biggest impact from Ed's answers on me had his opinion about the album cover of Sailing To Philadelphia. If I remember it correctly, he found it ridiculous. It was released 24 years ago these days, and I have the vinyl cover in front of my while listening to the vinyl. I always loved that cover from day one. I fully understand that anyone could find it boring or ininspired, but the contrast between "Sailing" and the plane makes curious and let you take the (then) CD in your hand when you spot in a store, the blue sky and the silve plane was an echoe of the Brothers in Arms cover and even the typo was cool. I still love it and would choose it among his best ones. I read also what Quizzy wrote about the covers and he is refreshing and original and right most of the time as usual , but the question shoud be what is a good album cover anyway?
LE
Yeah, that was hilarious... Also, Mark's answer, "Don't you like planes?" might take a permanent residency in the International Bureau of Weights and Measures as the funniest Manager & Artist communication ever. Very funny and memorable! I'd suggest that Ed could use it as a book title akin to Richard Feynman's "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" which was also a quote, and a book I absolutely can imagine Ed's book ending up being IF he decides to write it.
I can't remember what I said about covers, but your question is awesome. What is a good album cover? In a world where an album cover might be a solid white, blue, red or black picture... And the band can be named "The The", this question is unanswerable.
I think it's entirely random, just like band names. As long it's not taken, and nobody will sue you, then you're good to go... Bonus points if it has some relation to the music (like the band being in dire straits and naming themselves Dire Straits). The cover could be an old painting like Fleet Foxes' 2008 debut album or Paul Simon's latest album, a photograph like The Ragpicker's Dream or Fleet Foxes' Shore. It could be anything.
The problem here is that you NEED a cover, just like you can't type something without using a font. I'm sure a lot of artists would not use any covers at all if given a choice not to do it. But as they are forced to do it, then this problem is getting solved somehow. I can imagine a world where all the music is being sold in plain albums with the Artist's name and Album name, like in nearly all the books without their dust jacket covers.
So, to be completely honest, at least to me, the album cover is just like this... A dust jacket. Something to hold the music together. If I want to marvel at the beauty of a painting, or photograph, I'll go elsewhere. Besides, if it is a painting or a photograph, these artists are going to put words on top of it that weren't originally there. So, the bottom line is — fuck album covers, let's enjoy the music!