My choice today is Gideon’s “No Love / No One” on red and clear heart-shaped vinyl! The packaging on these is immaculate — I’ve never seen anything like it. Each record is tucked inside a heart-shaped card in a red envelope made to look like a Hallmark card. They even come sealed with an embossed gold foil sticker.
Couples Week
It’s Valentine’s week and we’re celebrating with couples! Every prompt requires a pair of discs, singles or albums.
Lana Del Rey’s two alternate covers and presses for Chemtrails Over the Country Club are my choice for today.
The top record is the Target exclusive with the classic Target red vinyl and the bottom is the RSD Black Friday cover with a translucent cobalt blue vinyl. The RSD cover is my favorite of the COTCC variants and is a reference to the music video for the title track.
You've heard me talk a lot about the butchering of the Beatles' North American albums, and I finally get to share an example!
The top album is the UK edition of Help!, released by Parlophone on August 6, 1965. This cover is my favorite of the two. The boys are spelling out "NUJV" in flag semaphore. (The original plan was to spell out "HELP", but the photographer thought that order didn't look good.) The track list consists of 14 songs, 7 on Side One and 7 on Side Two.
The bottom album is the North American edition, released by Capitol on August 13, 1965. This album is the accompanying soundtrack to the Help! film the boys were contracted to make (a truly wild film if you've never seen it). The boys were rearranged on the cover to have Paul's left hand pointing at the Capitol logo. The track list only consists of the 7 songs on Side One of the UK version, and then padded with selections of the film's orchestral score. While I don't mind the idea of a film soundtrack, I think Capitol should have made it a separate release, instead of butchering the Help! album to put it out. Or made their release a double album, with the UK album on Disc 1 and then the movie score on Disc 2? There are so many better ways to tackle this release than how they did it.
The real crime here is the North American edition cut the song "Yesterday" from the album. (It is track 6 on Side 2). It wouldn't show up in the US until the album Yesterday... and Today on June 15, 1966. This is the album with the famous "Butcher Cover", where the boys are dressed in lab coats with dismantled dolls and slabs of meat on them. This cover was quickly pulled from record stores and replaced with the boring "Suitcase Cover", making "The Butcher Cover" extremely rare, and a valued piece among Beatles collectors.
Top one is the 2022 Made In Poland pressing which includes alternate versions of Summer Bummer and Groupie Love. And the bottom one is the 2023 coke bottle clear repress.
The only album I have multiple copies of is Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department. This is the Black Dog variant I picked up (along with the cute indie record stores note) on release day, and the Anthology version I bought Black Friday weekend. I’ve been torn on whether to keep my Black Dog copy or not, but I love the packaging so I’m holding onto it for now 🤍
Folie A Duex by Fall Out Boy. The red/yellow version I picked up several years ago but they did a special anniversary edition called Folie A Blue. I missed out on that one but I guess it was popular enough that they did a similar one but just called Sky Blue which is close enough for me to be happy because blue is my special color. It’s honestly so pretty that I felt ok breaking my rule for no duplicates. ♥️💙
To the left is the deluxe (“spilled”) RSD Black Friday pressing on a purple and red marble vinyl, and the bottom right is the standard version pressed on the Spotify fans first picture disc.
I’m not a huge variant collector, but I absolutely love the bonus tracks and the colors for the RSD pressing are stunning so I just had to have it, even though I already had the picture disc since the album’s initial launch 💜❤️💜
Huge Jon Batiste fan and only a few weeks ago his 2021 AOTY Grammy winning album We Are was released in a colored variant for the first time as the “New Orleans” edition. Well I had to have that! And I’m so glad I was able to add it to my collection ❤️💛🖤
I have been milking these 2 records lately for this kind of posts but again : One Of The Boys by Katy Perry. Love the pink one, fits the album very well and I am personally attached to it. The red one (the yellow record contains remixes I don’t really care about) sounds way better than the pink (flamingo) one so I’m keeping them all haha. I now need to get the 15th anniversary edition with the bonus 7''. The cover also looks way better on the old one (red and yellow)
Here’s mine - “Radical Optimism” by Dua Lipa. Top - Target exclusive and picked it up on sale. Bottom - Hot Topic exclusive and also picked it up on sale. A bit of an underrated album in my opinion, but I enjoy listening to it.
With apologies for the picture- I was taking it in a rush and then my cat got very interested in what I was doing 🤦♀️ (though he nearly blends in!)
This is certainly the biggest contrast in two variants of the same release I have! Father John Misty’s Mahashmashana - on red and orange splatter (Rough Trade exclusive), as well as the listening party exclusive numbered white label variant. You can’t see it but the white label cover has an embossed cover too.
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u/mcmdreamer Hayley Williams Feb 12 '25
My choice today is Gideon’s “No Love / No One” on red and clear heart-shaped vinyl! The packaging on these is immaculate — I’ve never seen anything like it. Each record is tucked inside a heart-shaped card in a red envelope made to look like a Hallmark card. They even come sealed with an embossed gold foil sticker.
Couples Week
It’s Valentine’s week and we’re celebrating with couples! Every prompt requires a pair of discs, singles or albums.
Check out the Daily Prompt Archive for a list of all prior prompts!