‘Squaring the Circle: The Story of Hipgnosis’ Review: How Pink Floyd’s and Led Zep’s Album Covers Became a Rich Palette for ’70s Surrealism

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic A live album by Barbra Streisand that had originally been planned as her debut album in 1962, “Barbra Streisand — Live at the Bon Soir,” will finally get a release, 60 years after it was first penciled in as her recorded bow. At 24 songs, the set is undoubtedly much longer than what would have come out if Columbia had issued the live album six decades ago, as was first the plan. It comes out Nov. 4, 60 years to the week after Streisand’s shows at the Bon Soir club in Greenwich Village were recorded Nov. 4-6, 1962, just a little over a month after the 20-year-old theatrical sensation signed her Columbia deal. Ultimately the idea of releasing a live album as her debut was scrapped in favor of a 1963 studio recording, “The Barbra Streisand Album,” that had her recording 11 songs that were part of her nightclub repertoire. That decision is hard to second-guess, as her first album went on to win the Grammy for album of the year.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic LeAnn Rimes has been “Blue” about a few things lately, but not about a boy. On her new album, “God’s Work,” her 19th studio album, the singer deals with the darker sides of religion and the patriarchy —areas in which, for her, there’s some overlap — on top of a general pandemic-induced anxiety informing some of the more shadowy material. But the record is ultimately an upper, with guests like Ziggy Marley, Mickey Guyton, Sheila E., Ben Harper, Robert Randolph and Aloe Blacc contributing a palpable sense of community when she comes around to anthems of univesal love and acceptance. Sitting down with Variety in her home in the hills northwest of L.A., Rimes explored the quarter-century-plus journey from “Blue” — the massive hit that made her a household name when she was just 13 — to the depth she now possesses as a veteran who’s all of 40. Her longtime professional partner, co-writer/producer Darrell Brown, joined in with thoughts about what she’s undertaking in putting occasionally more provocative music out into the world as part of a healing journey she wants to share.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Bad Bunny and Harry Styles are back in the spots it’s been hard to force them out of for the last few months: at No. 1 on Billboard’s album and song charts, respectively. But the real achievement of the week may belong to someone who’s hovering below them: country star Morgan Wallen, who has set a record for his longevity in the top 10 of the Billboard 200. Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” has just established a new mark for the album by a single artist that has spent the most weeks in the Billboard album chart’s top 10: 86. The previous record-holder (per Billboard) was the debut album by folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary, which spent 85 weeks in the top 10 in the early ’60s. He’s also recently passed longevity marks for Adele’s “21” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA,” each of which spent 84 weeks in the top 10.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Freddie Freeman was hitting homers down in San Diego, so it was up to visiting superstar Lady Gaga to keep the on-base percentage exceptionally high Saturday night at Dodger Stadium, site of one of the last stops on her “Chromatica Ball” outing. Surprises were few, this many weeks into a mega-tour whose production values were already known among the legions of Little Monsters who’d long since put curious paws to Googling Gaga’s setlists and setpieces. Anyway, knowing what’s coming doesn’t quash the overpowering effects of a savvy performer who’s determined to look as cold as inhumanly possible while also, conversely, sounding like the warmest superstar you’ve ever encountered. Does that count, in ballplaying terms, as a slider?

Teen Mom: The Next Chapter just premiered on Tuesday night, and star Cheyenne Floyd revealed she experienced an absolutely TERRIFYING attempt at her life — with her KIDS and fiancé in the car!

It may be the most famous album cover ever created.

Think of the most iconic rock album covers of all time from the 1970s: Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of The Moon and Wish You Were Here, Led Zeppelin’s Houses Of The Holy and Presence, T. Rex’s Electric Warrior, Paul McCartney & Wings’ Band On The Run, AC/DC’s Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, all of Peter Gabriel’s early albums, etc.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic It’s fair to say that Abbey Road Studios is the most documented recording facility in the world, but only if you count the crosswalk outside. Otherwise, the nine-bedroom mansion turned studio hasn’t really had its day in the cinematic sun, the way that more modest studios like L.A.’s Sound City and Alabama’s Muscle Shoals have. Making up for that with an A-lister-filled movie treatment is “If These Walls Could Sing,” the first feature-length documentary from Mary McCartney, who has a hell of a shared Rolodex to draw upon in gathering the firsthand rock ‘n’ roll anecdotes you expect and want in a film like this. She’s also savvy enough to know that the guy working in the back gluing irreplaceable mid-century microphones back together deserves a few seconds of screen time, too.

second band, doesn’t have a terribly interesting cover, but it does make for a pointed example of how ridiculous rock excess extended even to album cover shoots in the ’70s and ’80s.While you might expect an image-savvy director like Corbijn to play up the visual over the verbal, he also knows that an agency as offbeat as Hipgnosis deserves a lot of storytelling. The company grew out of a London party that ended in a drug bust that doubled as a (non-romantic) meet-cute between a pair of eccentric and artistic young men, Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell.Po, as everyone called Powell, was an aspiring photographer, Storm some kind of mad genius with an eye for design and a huge stubborn streak.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Nick Lowe and Shakespeare were wrong, about having to be cruel to be kind. A tour stop Tuesday in Anaheim that had Lowe supporting headliner Elvis Costello as an opening act before eventually joining him for three climactic duets was kindly and 100% cruelty-free, reuniting the two former studio workmates in a fashion that made it seem as if no 40-year intervals had passed at all, except for the incidental actually-getting-better factors. (You’re not getting older, you’re getting Basher, etc.) Not that the show at the City National Grove of Anaheim — one of several SoCal appearances this week by Costello, with and without Lowe in tow — needed its crowning dream-teaminess to come up aces. Costello’s current sets with the Imposters represent the best example rock ‘n’ roll has at the moment of a vast catalog of classic material played with improvisational vigor by one of the great bands the medium has known, augmented by fresh material that can stand proudly alongside the vintage. “Indoor Fireworks” was one of the quieter songs performed Tuesday, but it’s an apt description of what’s occurring on this can’t-miss outing (with apologies to the shed stops where the group pyro happens outdoors).

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Maybe she meant to call her new album “1979.” Taylor Swift has unveiled three additional album covers for her October release “Midnights,” each of which is being promised as only being available for the next seven days, as a pre-sale in both vinyl and CD formats. Even more than the more permanent cover that was revealed Sunday night, these album jackets very much look designed to evoke the 1970s, sometimes subtly, sometimes more blatantly. There’s the touch-tone phone. There’s the LP jacket on the floor. (Well, that one evokes the 2020s, too, but the reckless disregard for the treatment of a piece of vinyl is very retro.) And most of all, as a backdrop for not just all the cover images but the Swift webstore landing page, there is wood paneling. (It’s not just for vintage VHS porn anymore.)

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Ingrid Andress is, by most measures, one of the most successful upstarts in mainstream country music over the past few years. After her debut album, “Lady Like,” came out in 2020, the Michigan native was nominated for best new artist at the Grammys as well as by the CMAs and ACMs. She’s a thoughtful live-wire and a media darling — those media including the press, late-night shows and, yes, country radio. Her first single, “More Hearts Than Mine,” was a double-platinum breakout hit that went top 5 at country radio, and a recent duet with Sam Hunt, “Wishful Drinking,” went top 10. She lands coveted tour spots, like her current one opening arena shows for Keith Urban all the way into November.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic The 2022 MTV Video Music Awards were all about that bass Sunday night, and Flea didn’t have a lot to do with it. “VMAs, did you think I wasn’t gonna shake my ass tonight?” asked Anitta, very rhetorically, in the middle of her routine — and while most viewers were probably grateful for her concern for our concern, there was no need to fear she’d be the show’s outlier. Even the rock bands that were booked seemed to want to go into the show ass-forwards; hello, Måneskin cheek skin. (The cameras seemed to want to cut away from that singer’s pasty bottom; as you could almost hear the editors channeling Lisa Kudrow’s Aunt Sassy.) The only thing surprising in this regard, really, was the amount of robot ass in the show. Digital effects were sometimes used to bolster the supply of background dancers, or to provide giant setpieces, like the Attack of the 50-Foot Twerker that all but literally overshadowed J Balvin and Ryan Castro. When MTV is having to outsource butts to Silicon Valley, maybe it’s a sign we need to better allocate our natural supply.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Taylor Swift surprised fans Sunday night with the announcement of an all-new album set to come out Oct. 26. The reveal came during her climactic speech at the MTV Video Music Awards, as she accepted an award for video of the year. “You guys, I’m just so proud of what we made, and I now that every second of this moment that we wouldn’t have been able to make this short film if it weren’t for you, the fans,” she said, accepting for “All Too Well (10-Minute Version).” “Because I wouldn’t be able to re-record my album [‘Red (Taylor’s Version),’ which included the winning song] if it weren’t for you. You emboldened me to do that. And I had sort of made up my mind that if you were going to be this generous and give us this, I thought it might be a fun moment to tell you that my brand-new album comes out October 21st. And I will tell you more at midnight.”

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic If you live in Los Angeles and you sometimes feel the heat, congestion or cost of living making you wonder about greener pastures, you may keep a running checklist in the back of your mind of Reasons Never to Move Away. If you live in L.A. and you’re a fan of roots or Americana music, you may keep the monthly Watkins Family Hour shows at Largo on that checklist of reasons not to check out— because in what other city are you going to find such a reliable monthly gathering of the contemporary folk-rock tribe? For 20 years now (maybe 21 — no one thought to start a count in the early 2000s), Sean Watkins and Sara Watkins have been convening some of the top musicians in Southern California, especially those with an acoustic bent, to join them at Largo for (mostly) monthly shows that bring a sense of community to a town where that’s not always easy to find. The extent to which the small, clubby theater enforces its no-phones policy means that potential fans definitely hear about the shows through word-of-mouth, not word-of-video.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Stepping into Muse frontman Matt Bellamy’s Los Angeles studio is immediately surreal, on a couple of different fronts. For one thing, there’s the fact that it’s in an unmarked former storefront on a heavily trafficked urban street, so on the other side of the one-way glass, pedestrians are constantly passing by, unaware that they’re about two yards away from a rock star coming up with new songs to potentially join “Madness” or ”Uprising” guy as new KROQ-driven earworms in their heads. But apart from the street scene outside practically brushing up against his console, there’s something else about the place… “I don’t know if you remember the TV show ‘Twin Peaks,’” Bellamy inquires. As a matter of fact, yes. “Do you remember the Red Room? We’re sitting in it, basically,” he says, and sure enough, here in the front room of his studio, there is the black-and-white zig-zag flooring, the wrap-around red drapes, the minimalist lamp, the vaguely retro sitting chair…. Bellamy is a student of fantastical pop culture, so it makes sense that he’s surrounded by a Lynchian throwback space — even if the rock arias he creates here passionately reach for the sky, rather than feeling like they’re stuck in an interdimensional waiting room.

Pink Floyd are reportedly set to make £400million from the sale of their back catalogue.Back in May, it was revealed that the legendary rockers were in talks to sell their entire catalogue, with a potential price for the sale reaching the hundreds of millions.Now, as reported by The Times, the band are looking for a £400million sale for their whole back catalogue, with private equity group Blackstone battling with major labels Sony, Warner, BMG and more to seal the deal.The sale, which would include Pink Floyd’s songs and master recordings, comes after they reunited earlier this year for new song ‘Hey, Hey, Rise Up!’, the band’s first original material since 1994’s ‘Division Bell’ album. The track was released to draw attention to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and to raise funds for those affected by the war, with all proceeds from the song donated to Ukrainian Humanitarian Relief.In a statement, David Gilmour – who has a Ukrainian family – explained that the band released the song to draw attention to the war and to raise money for humanitarian efforts.“We want to express our support for Ukraine and in that way, show that most of the world thinks that it is totally wrong for a superpower to invade the independent democratic country that Ukraine has become,” Gilmour said.The likes of Neil Diamond, Sting, Bob Dylan, ZZ Top, Tina Turner and Stevie Nicks have all sold their back catalogues recently.Many artists – including Neil Young, Blondie, Shakira and Fleetwood Mac‘s Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie – have all sold the rights to their catalogues via the Hipgnosis Song Fund.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic The suspense over which album by the Beatles might be next in line to get a remix and bonus-filled boxed-set treatment is over: It’s officially “Revolver.” Apple Corps and Universal Music have confirmed that a deluxe celebration of the 1966 release — which, like the Beatle boxes that have preceded it, will include a Giles Martin remix — is in the pipeline for this fall. An official announcement of the project is not expected to come until some time in September, at which point details about the deluxe package’s contents and a release date will be forthcoming.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic There hasn’t been any shortage of musicians getting involved in the growing NFT (non-fungible token) arena. But Muse’s “Will of the People” album, coming out this Friday, still looks to be a first of sorts, as far as adding a fairly straightforward, reasonably priced NFT edition of the release, day-and-date with the standard CD, vinyl and digital download editions of the release. In the U.K., Muse’s NFT version of the album has even been judged as “chart-compliant.” So how will the “Will of the People” sales in the NFT format count toward the band’s chart totals? Well, in the U.S., they won’t. America’s chart arbiters, Luminate and Billboard, are not as ready as their European counterparts to add NFTs into the cocktail of sales and streaming that add up to unit figures, so whatever number might be sold in the U.S. won’t be part of Muse’s opening number, domestically.

Atlanta rapper JID has revealed the tracklisting for his new The Forever Story. The album, out August 26 via Dreamville, is packed with special guests including verses from Lil Durk and Lil Wayne. Executive produced by longtime DJ and producer Christo, the album includes the singles "Dance Now" and "Surround Sound." The former features Kenny Mason, who also appears alongside JID and Wayne on "Just In Time." "Surround Sound," meanwhile, features 21 Savage and Baby Tate.