Music blogDevendra Banhart This article is more than 15 years oldNudity's back
This article is more than 15 years oldEarlier this week, hirsute folkster Devendra Banhart showed the world his wares on the artwork for Surfing, the debut album from his new side project Megapuss. Of course, he's not the first to get naked in the name of rock'n'roll, but it's been a while since anyone stripped off, for the simple reason that it's all a bit silly.
[View the image in its, ahem, entirety here. Best to cover sensitive co-workers/children/grandparents' eyes, though.]
Infamously, John and Yoko were shoved into a paper bag for their artistic endeavours on the very naked cover of Two Virgins in 1968, and the sight of Lennon's penis offended Sissy Spacek so much that she wrote a song about it (John, You've Gone Too Far This Time). They were certainly pioneering – full frontal album covers are less likely now than ever before, particularly when the American market relies on a retail giant like the censorship-happy Wal-Mart.
But there's always room for tasteful nudity (ie cheating). Ever since Jane Birkin compounded her J'Taime reputation for sauciness by getting naked on the cover of 1973's Di Doo Dah, though it was head and shoulders only, with arms covering anything properly rude, the "vulnerable/natural" pose appears to have been written into the contract of virtually every female solo artist. PJ Harvey looked like she'd just got out of the bath on the cover of Rid Of Me. Björk went appropriately child-of-the-forest on the single of Pagan Poetry. Annie Lennox was literal with the artwork for Bare, Liz Phair protected her modesty with a guitar on her eponymous album, and Alanis Morrissette curled up in a nude ball on the CD of Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie.
Banhart's Megapuss artwork is less Prince posing as a blurry sex-nymph on the cover of Lovesexy, more the Slits fighting in mud and somehow making that far more punk than sticking the word "bollocks" on a cover in ransom-note letters. It takes nudity away from vulnerability, and even sexiness, and handsit right back to the likes of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, circa their sock-donning period. Yes, it's obnoxious, but that has to be better than soft-focus sincerity.
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