A Momentary Lapse of Artwork
For men of a certain age, Pink Floyd represents a milieu—brooding, melancholy, emo before emo had a name. I started listening to Floyd in high school and being a kid who always felt like an outsider, The Wall really resonated with me. In college, I started exploring their back catalog and Animals and Wish You Were Here became my favorites. Of course, as a designer, I have always loved the album covers. Storm Thorgerson and Hipgnosis’ surreal photos were mind-bending and added to the music’s feelings of alienation, yearning, and the aching beauty of being lost.
I hadn’t listened to the music in a while but the song “Two Suns in the Sunset” from The Final Cut periodically pops into my head. I listened to the full album last Sunday. On Tuesday, I pulled up their catalog again to play in the background while I worked and to my surprise, all the trippy cover art was replaced by white type on a black surface!
The classic image of the prism and rainbow for The Dark Side of the Moon was replaced by “A PRISM REFRACTS LIGHT INTO THE SPECTRUM.” It’s essentially alt text for all the covers—deadpan captions where the surreal images used to be.
“ROWS OF HOSPITAL BEDS ON A BEACH” for 1987’s A Momentary Lapse of Reason.
“A WALL OF WHITE BRICKS WITH RED GRAFFITI” for The Wall.
“TWO MEN IN SUITS SHAKING HANDS ONE MAN IS ON FIRE” for Wish You Were Here.
And my favorite—“PHOTO WITHIN A PHOTO WITHIN A PHOTO” for Ummagumma.
What is going on? Are they broken images replaced by alt text? Some folks on the internet think it is a protest against AI art.
But in reality, it’s part of a marketing campaign because Pink Floyd’s official website has also been wrapped in a black cloth…
Maybe it’s not cloth. Looks more like black plastic. And that’s because it’s very likely coinciding with the 50th anniversary of Wish You Were Here, which famously shipped to stores wrapped in black shrink-wrap, forcing buyers to just buy the record on faith.
There was a conceptual reason behind it of course. From Wikipedia:
Storm Thorgerson had accompanied the band on their 1974 tour and had given serious thought to the meaning of the lyrics, eventually deciding that the songs were, in general, concerned with "unfulfilled presence", rather than [former lead vocalist and founding band member Syd] Barrett's illness. This theme of absence was reflected in the ideas produced by his long hours spent brainstorming with the band. Thorgerson had noted that Roxy Music's Country Life was sold in an opaque green cellophane sleeve – censoring the cover image – and he copied the idea, concealing the artwork for Wish You Were Here in a black-coloured shrink-wrap (therefore making the album art "absent").
I’m curious to see if there is a big reveal tomorrow, the actual anniversary of my favorite Pink Floyd album, and maybe the most fitting tribute to absence they could pull off.
UPDATE 9:05 PM, September 11, 2025:
At midnight Eastern Time, Apple Music updated with a new pre-release album from Pink Floyd with cover art—the 50th anniversary edition of Wish You Were Here. It’ll be fully released on December 12.
