Top 5 Dog Album Artworks Ever (Part II)

Is it really necessary to explain such an album cover? Released on DGC records, Odelay was to become Beck’s most successful album of all time, selling over £2.3 million copies. Featuring several of Beck’s best singles including ‘Where It’s At’ and ‘Devils Haircut’, the album tends to appear in numerous publication lists of the greatest records of the 1990’s. The image chosen for the album cover came about as a last resort when band members were unable to agree on an image. Beck’s girlfriend eventually found this photo of a rare Hungarian Komondor suggesting they use it instead and the rest is history. The title of the album also came about in a peculiar manner, according to reporter, Stephen Malkmus, the title is a pun on the phrase Oh Delay as the album took so long to record.

Made up from vocalist Roisin Murphy and musician Mark Brydon, Moloko’s Sing It Back only reached number 45 on the UK singles chart. However, in recent years the song has taken a life of its own, featured in endless remixes by everyone from Todd Terry (who had immense success with Missing by Everything but the Girl) to Boris D, who’s version of the song would eventually break the UK top 10 chart. It’s also been widely used for commercials and adverts, most notably Sky Sports who employed it as their theme tune to weekend football in the Premier League.

Backyard Dog are a record producing duo consisting of Aniff Akinola and Lloyd Hanley, originating from Britain’s musical epicentre, Manchester. Their name was born when Akinola kicked Lloyd out of his recording studio, instigating Lloyd to respond "you can't treat me like this, you're treating me like a backyard dog". The 2001 single made it to number 15 in the UK singles chart and was used as the theme tune to the 2002 FIFA World Cup and films such as Ali G Indahouse and Bend It Like Beckham. The video too involves a dog, a Staffordshire Terrier who holds a ‘club-night’ in his stomach!

Produced on Geffen Records, the seventh studio album from the Los Angeles quartet Ratitude, debuted at number 7 on the Billboard 200. Since its release, it has sold just under a quarter of a million copies, and mixed reviews varying from ‘substandard’ to ‘worst album of the year’ result in it being labelled one of the less popular Weezer albums. However, the album artwork is superb, so much so it makes the cover photo of my Twitter account. The cover art depicts a dog called Sidney flying through the air in someone’s living room; it was originally published in the August 2009 issue of the National Geographic in the ‘Your Shot’ section. Jason Neely, Sidney’s owner expands on how this came to be: “Sidney was a rescue dog that we adopted in Gainesville, Florida. His mother was due to be put down, but when some girls found out that she was pregnant, they rescued her and helped her have the pups. From the day we brought him home, we knew he was a special boy – I have never seen a dog with as much energy”. Subsequently, Sidney has become the most well-known dog in the Rock & Roll community!

Ending their five-year hiatus, The Prodigy re-entered the mainstream with this fantastic new-rave dance classic that made the top 5 in the UK singles chart thus becoming the bands tenth top 10 hit and their highest charting single since ‘Breathe’ in 1996. The front cover depicts another Staffordshire Terrier but more in the vein of the classic horror movie, The Omen as he positions himself next to a mysterious girl who, in the video for the single is depicted playing a xylophone interspersed with footage of the band playing at a rave. The single was co-produced with band Does It Offend You, Yeah? although the main hook was created by electronic genius Liam Howlett.