A Few Favorite 45 Labels

We get a lot of nostalgic boomers who want to look at record jackets and talk about them – “Its like going into a time warp” and, my favorite, “I can’t believe people still listen to records” (thanks) – and a handful of collectors who only want records for the covers. Undeniably, album art is a big part of vinyl’s appeal over compact discs and digital media, but I’ve always loved another kind of vinyl art: 45 labels.

For the designer there are a lot fewer options. Novelty album jackets have been made with everything from holograms to stickers and complicated folds (like Black Moses), and some are even three-dimensional objects like Alice Cooper’s school desk and Jethro Tull’s newspaper. The 45 label really doesn’t offer options like that, but over the years labels had all kinds of beautiful designs.

The Orbit Records label is my personal favorite. I also like a few of the labels you see pretty often, such as Bang!, Stax (I like the green ones best) and the purple Capitol ones. The others shown here today are Crimson, which changed its design at least once, and Good Idea, a local label which I thought was also a great name.

I think we’ll take a few more pictures of unusual 45 labels at the shop this week and post some more. Any favorites out there?