Album Cover Parodies and Tributes to Dark Side of the Moon

Left: 20 album covers referencing the Dark Side of the Moon. Right: 1973 Pink Floyd - "Dark Side of the Moon" album cover.

What is this album?

The "Dark Side of the Moon" is the 8th studio album by Pink Floyd, released in 1973. This album is easily on the shortlist of many given the task of naming important music in their lives. The album has influenced generations of subsequent musicians, some of which are discussed in the post and specifically chose album covers parodying or paying tribute to the original cover.

Here we go again with "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" shtick again, but did you know that in 2013, the album was selected for preservation in the United States National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress. In a previous parody album post, we mentioned that Saturday Night Fever was also included in the registry, which couldn't be more different than Dark Side of the Moon.

What's on the cover?

The cover of "Dark Side of the Moon" depicts a dispersive prism breaking up white light into its constituent colors, the colors of the rainbow. The iconic cover art shows light entering one facet of the prism and separating into colors only after leaving the second facet, which is not correct. Light starts to disperse upon entering the first facet. Also, the dispersed light exiting the prism is missing the color indigo.

This album cover was designed by Storm Thorgeson (1944 – 2013), who designed many classic album covers including previous Pink Floyd albums.

How did we choose the albums to feature here?

We decided that the criteria for inclusion here should be that the album is mostly black and clearly shows light, whole and/or separated. Also, a good play on words was a plus. For example, consider the phrase: "ABC side of the XYZ". In the selected albums here, ABC = Dark, Dub, Darker, Dork side. And XYZ = Moonshine, Moon pie, Spoon, Goon, Mandolin, Tune. Love us a good pun.

There are many more parodies of the album cover and tributes to the album in general then we show here. In the age of mashups, there are many "invented" covers. We had to sort through a lot of creative covers that didn't represent real music. For lists, see this KnowYourMeme.com list and this AmIRight.com list.


Why did these artists choose to use this cover?

It's hard to say for sure, but it seems the albums fall into two categories. Half of the albums shown here just reference the cover and that's it. The other half reference the cover as well as feature the album's songs from start to finish – a more thorough referencing. Those that recreate the album from start to finish are:

- 2000 The Squirrels – "The Not-So-Bright Side of the Moon"
- 2001 Out of Phase – "Dark Side of the Moon – Celebrating Pink Floyd's Most Influential Album"
- 2002 Pink Fraud – "Darker Than the Moon"
- 2003 Easy Star All-Stars – "Dub Side of the Moon"
- 2003 The Vitamin String Quartet – "The String Quartet Tribute to Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon"
- 2005 Vocomotion – "Dark Side of the Moon a Cappella"
- 2006 Various – "Return to the Dark Side of the Moon: A Tribute to Pink Floyd"
- 2009 Poor Man's Whiskey – "Dark Side of the Moonshine"
- 2013 Think Floyd – "The Dark Side of the Moon - 40th Anniversary Edition"
- 2017 Mandol'in Progress – "The Dark Side of the Mandolin"

We listened to as many of these albums as possible and have to say the Poor Man's Whiskey, Mando'lin Progress, Vocomotions, and Easy Star All-Star's albums are standouts because they reinterpret the music in a very different musical paradigm than the original and still work very well.

Also of interest are these song-by-song covers of the original album, which we didn't include in our visual collage (they failed the criteria given above):

- 2009 The Flaming Lips, Stardeath and White Dwarfs – "The Dark Side of the Moon"
- 2010 Mary Fahl – "From the Dark Side of the Moon"

Also included in our collage are the 20th and 30th anniversary releases of the album by Pink Floyd, both using cover imagery evoking the original.

Finally, instead of the prism, some of the parody/tribute covers feature other objects such as a spoon, martini glass, moon pie, whiskey jug, pint of beer, mandolin, and glasses. In some cases, the choice of the object is clearly connected to the title or theme and others, it's a guess.

Album Cover Parodies and Spoofs of Saturday Night Fever

Left: 16 parodies of the Saturday Night Fever album cover. Right: The Saturday Night Fever album cover. 

The 1977 film Saturday Night Fever was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry in 2010 by the Library of Congress. If the Library of Congress thinks it's important, well then so does Travelmarx. The film revolves around Tony Manero (John Travolta), a dancing and drinking working-class New Yorker who is just trying to find himself.

If you were born before this film was released, you probably remember it and it occupies part of your psyche – for better or for worse. The film burned into our psyche its catchy soundtrack by the Bee Gees and other artists, as well as that classic image of Travolta in a white disco suit, striking a pose: left hip jutted out and right arm pointing upward.

If you were born after the movie's release, chances are you became aware of the film through later parodies or remakes of the music.

That brings us to the album cover parodies of the original soundtrack. The Discogs list Saturday Night Fever - Parody Tribute Imitation Inspiration has many more parodies than what we show here. We curated the list to album covers that clearly show that classic, multi-colored dance floor, whic in our mind makes the image.

We listened to as many of these parodies as we could. It was surprising even to us how cringe-worthy some of them are. Though, the 2 Jews Live Present album is kind of cute. They are a Jewish hip-hop parody due from Miami, Florida. The Saturday Night Fever album cover spoofs come from artists ranging from America, France, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, Israel, Mexico, and the UK. The album parodies go from 1977 to 2020, just to drive home the point that the Library of Congress was right.

Of mention but not show here (because the cover doesn't resemble the original) is the Hector Zazou, Barbara Eramo, Stefano Saletti – Oriental Night Fever, which is a interesting take on the some of the Saturday Night Fever songs as well as other disco songs.

Of mention, and definitely next go at the collage: Saturday Night Hay Fever.


1977 Sesame Street Fever
1978 Cepillín - Cepillin Night Fever - Mexico
1978 Ricki Gal - Chassidisco Fever - Israel
1979 Arthur Fiedler & the Boston Pops - Saturday Night Fiedler
1979 Israeli Disco Fever
1979 Les Pantheres Roses Guy De Lo and His Orchestra - The Pank Panther Discostar - France
1981 439 Golden Greats - Never Mind The Originals Here's The HeeBeeGeeBees
1995 Thumper - No One Left the Disco Alive
1998 Jane's Detd – Saturday - Belgium
2004 Saverio & Lele - Nando Discoteca - Italy
2004 Sinterklaas Fever m.m.v. Hermes House Band & Kinderkoor Prettig - Sinterklaas Fever – Netherlands. Sinterklaas is Sint-Nicolaas in Dutch, a figure based on Saint Nicholas, patron saint of children.

2008 Les Bidochons - Saturday Night Bidochons - France
2009 2 Live Jews Present - Disco Jews
2009 Various - Disco Re-Adventures
2013 The Bar-Steward Sons of Val Doonican - Sat'day Neet Fever - UK
2007 Polkadot Cadaver - Purgatory Dance Party – recorded version of 2007 album.

The Names of Common Emojis in Italian

Motivation | What is an emoji? | Emoji translations to Italian | Resources

Motivation

A text message arrived one day driving from Bergamo to Cuneo. We asked for the message to be read out loud which included emojis in the message. One of the emojis read was ridere a crepapelle for "rolling on the floor laughing" 🤣, which had us rolling on the floor. We had never heard the name of it before. That experience got us interested in learning more about emojis, specifically their names in Italian and English.

You probably use emojis all the time but don't know what their real names are or, maybe, you have invented your own names. We were surprised at some of the names of common emojis and realized we had probably been using them all wrong.

What is an emoji?

What is the correct word to use, "emoticon" or "emoji"? It depends. In this post we talk about emojis. Emojis are pictorial symbols used inline with text, in electronic messages and web pages. The primary function of emojis are to fill in emotional cues otherwise missing from typed conversation. Emoticons are technically punctuation marks, numbers, and letters, used in a similar way to emojis. In short, emojis are pictorial not typographical. Originally meaning pictograph, the word emoji comes from Japanese e (絵, 'picture') + moji (文字, 'character').

The design of the emojis looks different depending on the platform you are using them on. In this video on how emojis are created, you get a sense of the process of how emojis are created and approved. Emoji submissions are open to anyone. For more information, see How Are New Emoji Selected.

The Unicode Consortium sets the standard of how text is represented and displayed in software, which includes emojis. The Unicode Standard includes over 3,600 emojis. Unicode CLDR (Common Locale Data Repository) is the repository of locale data (of the consortium) and is a form consumable for use in applications. To use emojis, you don't need to worry any of this, but there are some interesting tips that come out of these resources.

• Tip 1: Say you wanted to look up to see what keywords in English or Italian you could use to find an emoji, you can use the Unicode CLDR GitHub repo. For example, when you are in WhatsApp and you call up cerca emoji or "search for emojis", how do you know what to type? With the resources in GitHub (English or Italian), you can see the words to type to quickly find the emoji you are looking for. An Italian friend sends us the 🙌 emoji a lot and we didn't know really what it means. Looking in the it.xml file in GitHub, you can see the keywords used for this emoji are evviva, mani, mani alzate, urrà, and vittoria. The emoji is called "raising hands" or mani alzate. You can also find this information in the Survey Tool described below.
• Tip 2: The emojiterra.com site has a convenient list of the Italian names of emojis that correspond to the Unicode names.
• Tip 3: The full emoji list in English can be found on Unicode.com Emoji Charts. From this chart, you can quickly see how emojis are rendered on different platforms.
• Tip 4: To see all the locales (translations) for an emoji, you can make use of the CLDR Charts, select By-Type. Characters: Smileys & Emotion and Characters: People & Body which contain the common emojis. For example, open Smileys & Emotion, search for "rolling on the floor laughing" to see the Italian locale (IT) translation as ridere a crepapelle.

So why did we bring up the Unicode Consortium in the first place? Because there is a consortium process that determines how emojis get their localized (translated) names. The process involves translation proposals and resolutions using the Survey Tool. You can look at the tool in read only mode by clicking the tool link in the Survey Tool Accounts page. In the tool, search for Italian, select Characters. You can see that member organizations (or representatives from them) propose and vote on names. This is our best guess at how the names come about…if you ever wondered like we did. These are proposed names for the emojis that most platforms/software use as is without modification.

Screenshots of survey tool with Italian locale and searching for emojis in WhatsApp.

The names of common emojis in Italian

To select some emojis to find translations for, we decided to try to focus on the most popular. But how to determine that? We looked at several sources to pick our final list of 20: The Most Popular Emojis, Emoji Statistics on Emojipedia, Unicode Consortium Emoji Frequency, and Top-50 Emoji.

The following legend is used in the list below:

• Emojiterra emoji names correspond to Unicode (U) names.
• iPhone (IOS) – as read by selecting the emoji in WhatsApp and reading it.
• Emojiguide (EG) – can have alternative names for emojis; gives interpretation (in English) of usage.

😂 Face with tears of joy, U+1F602

• IOS/U: Faccina con lacrime di gioia
• EG: Faccina con lacrime di felicità

😭 Loudly crying face, U+1F62D

• U: Faccina disperata
• IOS: Faccina che piange disperata
• EG: Faccina che piange urlando

🥺 Pleading face, U+1F97A

• U: Faccina supplichevole
• IOS: Faccina con l'espressione supplicante
• EG: Faccina supplicante

❤️ Red heart, U+2764

• IOS/EG/U: Cuore rosso

🤣 Rolling on the floor laughing, U+1F923

• U: Ridere a crepapelle
• IOS: Faccina che ride a crepapelle
• EG: Faccina ROFL

✨ Sparkles, U+2728

• U: Stelline
• EG/IOS: Scintille

😍 Smiling face with heart-eyes, U+1F60D

• U: Faccina con sorriso e occhi a cuore
• EG: Faccina con occhi a cuore
• IOS: Faccina con gli occhi a forma di cuore

🙏 Folded hands, U+1F64F

• EG/IOS/U: Mani giunte

🥰 Smiling face with hearts, U+1F970

• EG/IOS: Faccina sorridente con cuori
• U: Faccina con cuoricini

😊 Smiling face with smiling eyes, U+1F60A

• U: Faccina con occhi sorridenti
• EG: Faccina sorridente con occhi felici
• IOS: Faccina che sorride con occhi sorridenti e guance rosse

👍 Thumbs up

• U: Pollice in su
• EG: Pollice su
• IOS: Pollice verso altro

😘 Face blowing a kiss

• U/IOS/EG: Faccina che manda un bacio

💕 Two hearts U+1F495

• U/EG: Due cuori

😅 Grinning face with sweat U+1F605

• U: Faccina con un gran sorriso e goccia di sudore
• EG: Faccina ghignante con sudore
• IOS: Faccina che ride con gli occhi sorridenti con goccia di sudore

😁 Beaming face with smiling eyes U+1F601

• U/EG: Faccina raggiante con occhi felici
• IOS: Faccina con occhi sorridente

👌 OK hand U+1F44C

• U/IOS: Mano che fa OK
• EG: Gesto OK

💪 Flexed biceps U+1F4AA

• U: Bicipite
• EG/IOS: Bicipite flesso

😆 Grinning squinting face U+1F606

• U: Sorriso a bocca aperta con occhi chiusi
• EG: Faccina occhi stretti ghignante
• IOS: Faccina molto sorridente che strizza gli occhi

💙 Blue heart U+1F499

• U/IOS: Cuore azzurro
• EG: Cuore blue

💔 Broken heart U+1F494

• U/IOS: Cuore infranto
• EG: Curore spezzato

The emoji for the VERY Italian gesture of che vuoi!? or ma cosa dici!? is https://unicode-table.com/en/1F90C/. It hasn't made its way into all platforms as of writing.

Resources

Emojipedia.org – English only, shows Unicode and short codes

EmoticonSignificato.it – Italian explanations of emojis. Some definitions diverge from Unicode.

EmojiTerra.com – In English and other languages. Can search in English than switch to Italian.

EmojiGuide.com – Search in English, find an emoji, and then at the bottom of the page find description in other languages.

Emojigraph.org – Find emojis in all languages with explanations.

The 100 Most-Used Emojis (2014)

Unicode Consortium – Background on how emojis come to be and the base set used across platforms and software.

Unicode CLDR Project – useful for developers building software who want to incorporate emojis in their applications.

Unicode-Table.com – look up any emoji, see Top-50

Music Album Covers with Lips on Them - Part 2

A composite image showing 16 albums covers with lips on them.

In our previous post about lips on album covers - part 2, we focused on red female lips. In this post, we have 16 more lip themed music album covers expanded to cover male lips, mustached lips, pierced lips, and lips with something between them. All the representations of lips on album covers clearly show the facial feature called cupid's bow, which is the curve of the upper lip said to resemble the bow of Cupid, the Roman god of love.

The albums in the composite image are arranged by date, which range from 1973 to 2020. For even more lips, see lips on album covers - part 3. 

Row 1:
1973 Tom Zé – "Todos os olhos" – means "all eyes" (A commenter below suggested this is actually not a mouth and would actually be an anus. Read about it here.)
1974 Michael Longo – "900 Shares of the Blues"
1975 Rufus and Chaka Khan – "Rufus featuring Chaka Khan"
1976 Bijelo Dugme ‎– "Eto! Baš Hoću!" - means "There! I will!"

Row 2:
1979 38 Special – "Rockin' Into the Night"
1982 Black Ice – "Black Ice"
1984 Chocolate Lips – "Chocolate Lips"
1987 The Cure – "Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me"

Row 3:
2002 Iz, Diz – "Mouth"
2006 Escape the Fate – "Dying is Your Latest Fashion"
2011 Toro y Moi – "Underneath the Pine"
2013 The Wanted – "Word of Mouth"

Row 4:
2015 Nicolas Godin – "Contrepoint"
2017 Gorilla Pulp – "Heavy Lips"
2018 Oh, Weatherly – "Lips Like Oxygen"
2020 Megan Thee Stallion – "Suga"