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NOVEMBER MUSIC

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As far as debut albums go, you'd be stretched to find one that punched a bigger crater in the landscape of musical history than Wu-Tang Clan's Enter the Wu-Tang: 36 Chambers. In the very early '90s, RZA (Robert Diggs) and Ghostface Killah (Dennis Coles) – both experienced but unheralded rappers trying to make their way in New York – started collaborating. The pair decided to launch their hip-hop collective as "Eastern philosophy picked up from kung fu movies, watered-down Five-Percent Nation preaching picked up on the New York streets, and comic books," according to RZA. Eventually expanding the Clan to nine and producing an album utterly unique for its sinister beats, hardcore and humourous lyrics, martial arts movies samples and – not least – its incredibly tiny budget, Wu Tang immediately stomped their mark and became a new standard for the genre.

THIS MONTH:

Tkay Maidza

Raekwon in the clip for Wu-Tang's C.R.E.A.M (1993)

Warren Ellis

Looking back at the stories behind our favourite album covers, this month it's R.E.M's Automatic for the People (1992).

R.E.M.'s reputation for oblique references (mostly thanks to lyricist and frontman Michael Stipe) was well established by the early '90s, so no one was particularly surprised when the Georgia alt-rock pioneers' eighth album arrived with cover art of... an anchor? A steeple? A Czech hedgehog? A naval mine?

Plenty of listeners were happy not to know what it was at all, because the image's mystery was well suited to the album's introspective and poignant ruminations on mortality, love, and regret. But here's the truth, and – trust R.E.M. – it's typically esoteric. The cover art of Automatic for the People – the band's most successful album, which spawned singles Everybody Hurts, Nightswimming, Man on the Moon and more – is a photograph taken by Stipe himself, on Miami's Biscayne Boulevard (around the corner from Criteria Studios, where most of Automatic for the People was recorded). It's a detail from the unilluminated sign of the Sinbad Motel, of a star ornament in a style common in '60s architecture – often called a 'Sputnik sign'.

The 25th anniversary edition of

R.E.M's Up arrives Nov 10, while the yellow vinyl reissue of Automatic for the People drops next month.

A Sputnik sign at Joe's Wines and Liquors in Memphis, Tennessee. Credit: MemphisCVB

26 NOVEMBER 2023

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