Music Album Covers with Eyes on Them

A composite image of 36 album covers featuring eyes.

In a previous post, Music Album Covers with Single Eyes on Them, we showed 36 albums covers featuring an eye (just one). In this post, we show 36 more album covers with eyes on them, but this time, two eyes.

To start with we just couldn't resist leaving out "Private Eyes" (1981) by Hall and Oates, the single "Bette Davis Eyes" (1981) by Kim Carnes, and "Eye of the Tiger" (1982) by Survivor. We admit, these did figure largely in the musical landscape we grew up in. Yes, we are old.

The 36 album covers featured here are just a sampling, needless to say, that caught our eye and that we've listened to.

What catches our eyes in these albums: 

• The Italian legend Mina (1940 - ) has always featured her eyes on covers and some of her album covers are featured here, including "Olio" (1999) and "Veleno" (2002).
• Ronnie Spector's (1943 – 2022) eyes – importantly accompanied with eyeliner and teased hair – have often been featured on her solo work and work with the Ronettes.
• The Pretenders "Packed!" (1990) album cover with lead singer Chrissie Hyndes (1951 - ) with her bangs hovering over the eyes.
• Dusty Springfield's (1939 -1999) 12th studio album "White Heat" (1982) serving us pop and new wave with a smokey eye on the cover.
• The debut album of Bette Midler (1945 - ) "The Divine Miss M" (1972) with the artwork of Richard Amsel featuring Midler's eyes framed with blue eyeshadow.
• The cover "Halo" (2017) by the Argentinian Juana Molina (1961 - ), featuring eyes staring out of a bone. (The title "Halo" is a reference to the Argentine folk legend for the will-o'-the-wisp, known as the "luz mala" (Spanish for "evil light"), which floats above the ground where bones are buried.)

The list of albums featured in the composite are:

1961 The Ronettes – "The Best Of"
1963 Sarah Vaughan – "Star Eyes"
1967 Brenda and the Tabulations – "Dry Your Eyes"
1969 King Crimson – "In the Court of Kind Crimson"
1969 White Eyes – "White Eyes"
1970 Hairy Chapter – "Eyes"
1972 Bette Midler – "The Divine Miss M"
1977 Curtis Mayfield – "Short Eyes"
1979 Vangelis – "Opera Sauvage"
1981 Hall and Oates – "Private Eyes"
1981 Kim Carnes – "Bette Davis Eyes"
1982 Dusty Springfield – "White Heat"
1982 Rainbow – "Straight Between the Eyes"
1982 Survivor – "Eye of the Tiger"
1983 Cats Original Soundtrack
1983 Danielle Dax – "Pop-Eyes"
1984 Willie Nelson – "Angel Eyes"
1985 Idle Eyes – "Idle Eyes"
1985 Jeff Phelps – "Magnetic Eyes"
1986 REM – "Lifes Rich Pageant"
1987 Various – "Who's that Girl"
1988 Danielle Dax – "Dark Adapted Eye"
1990 The Pretenders – "Packed!"
1991 Sarah McLachlan – "Solace"
1992 Bauhaus – "Rest in Peace: The Final Concert"
1995 Various – "A Tribute to Led Zeppelin"
1999 Mina – "Olio"
2002 Mina – "Veleno"
2003 Limp Bizikit – "Behind Blue Eyes"
2004 Mina – "The Platinum Collection"
2006 Paul Simon – "Surprise"
2008 Richard Swift – "Richard Swift as Onasis"
2009 Mina – "Sulla tua bocca lo dirò"
2014 Imperial State Electric – "Eyes"
2017 Juana Molina – "Halo" 
2018 Arat Kilo, Mamani Keïta, Mike Ladd – "Visions of Selam"

Cattedrale Vegetale of Oltre il Colle and Climate Change

Left: Cattedrale Vegetale (Oltre Il Colle) January 2022. Right: Cattedrale Vegetale (Oltre Il Colle) April 2017.

Today, we took a hike to Capanna 2000, again. The hike is a bit of slog and it's pretty only once you get up high just below Rifugio Capanna 2000. Capanna 2000 is really at 1969 meters, but who's quibbling?

The last time we were here in April 2017 there was snow, which made everything much more beautiful. This time, the mountains are mostly dry and brown and it's January! Where's the snow?

The hike takes place over what were once ski slopes (from the 1970s to the 1990s) and along up to Monte Arera and Capanna 2000 you pass traces of abandoned ski infrastructure. Changes in climate (less snow and unpredictability in when it comes) have shuttered the ski aspirations of this area. And it's not only on these slopes of Monte Arera that this has happened. Many nearby ski areas are suffering or teetering on the edge of bankruptcy because of climate change.

The Cattedrale Vegetale is a "feature" you pass by on your way up to Capanna 2000. We find it interesting. Unfortunately, our hiking companions aren't as enthralled with it as we are. On this warm Sunday, we find the cattedrale growing back. What? You see, it too was a victim in a way of climate change. In 2018, an unprecedented storm with unprecedented winds seriously damaged the cattedrale.

Let's break this all down to try and make sense of it and have an Italian vocabulary lesson at the same time.

Cattedrale Vegetale – "Tree Cathedral" is an approximate translation. The cathedral has 42 columns (colonne) divided into 5 aisles (navate). Each column is a beech tree encircled with a wooden support structure.

• The cathedral was the idea of Giuliano Mauri (1938 – 2009), an Italian artist and proponent of "environmental art". "The cathedral was built according to the ancient art of weaving, which involves the use of flexible wood, stakes, ropes and nails."
• There are two other tree cathedrals: one in Val Sella (Malga Costa) made of hornbeam trees and the other in Lodi, along the Adda river, made of oak trees.
• The Lodi Tree Cathedral was also destroyed in 2019, by a different storm.

Capanna - means hut, cabin, or cabin. Rifugio Capanna 2000 is the mountain hut that is a popular hiking excursion just outside of Bergamo. In the Province of Bergamo there about 30 such mountain huts.

Oltre il Colle – The location of the tree cathedral we visit today is in the municipality of Oltre Il Colle in the Province of Bergamo, about 20 km northeast of Bergamo (Val Seriana). The town's name means "beyond the hill" because the town is nestled in a bowl between four mountains: Arera, Grem, Menna, and Alben. When hiking to Capanna 2000 (see Hike: Cattedrale Vegetale to Capanna 2000), you are on the southern flank of Arera.

Faggio – Beech trees (Fagus sylvatica) are the trees used in the Oltre Il Colle Cattedrale Vegetale. Abete – fir trees make up the "cage" that surrounds each tree. These cages are designed to break down over time and leave just the beech trees as majestic columns of a tree cathedral.

Nubifragio – A violent storm (nubifragio) destroyed the Oltre Il Colle Cattedrale Vegetale. The storm occurred on October 28, 2018 and is called Tempesta Vaia (in English Storm Adrian).

• A synonym for nubifragio is tempesta violenta.
• In researching this post, we found that you can pay to name a storm (at least in Europe). What!? This storm was purchased to honor Vaia Jackobs, a manage for a multinational mattress company. The gift was purchased by her brother. Let's just say we hope our siblings never honor us in this way.
• Tempesta Vaia impacted Northern Italy. Besides record rainfalls, there were record winds, average and peak. Entire forests where literally blown over.
• There are some drone shots and 1-year-later photos here that show the extensive damage.

Left: Cattedrale Vegetale (Oltre Il Colle) sits on a spur with Monte Alben in the background.
Center: A majestic tree that caught our eye near Rifugio SABA Cà Arera.
Right: One of the early flowers in the Asteraceae fmaily, Tossilago farfara, commonly known as Coltsfoot.

Left: The hike tracks from Plassa to Capanna 2000.
Center: The mountains surrounding Oltre Il Colle.
Right: The last stretch of the "road" up to Capanna 2000.

Left: Old ski infrastructure recalls the heyday of skiing between the end of the 1970s and the end of the 1990s. There should be snow in January.
Center: The pasture below Capanna 2000 looking west toward Menna.
Right: Two hikers talk on the way down from Capanna 2000 with Monte Arera in the background. Notice how brown everything is.


Left: Monte Menna near Oltre Il Colle, Bergamo.
Center: Monte Grem near Oltre Il Colle, Bergamo.
Right: The trail up to Capanna 2000 is mostly paved.

Left: Cheese plate at Rifugio Capanna 2000.
Center: Strudel at Rifugio Capanna 2000.
Right: Pizzocheri, a buckwheat pasta dish common to this area.

The pièce de résistance of the lunch: lo stinco di maiale.