Foo Fighters got obsessed with the number eight when they recorded Sonic Highways, released on 10 November 2014. It was after all their eight album.
It also shared its title with an eight-episode documentary series which saw the band travelling around, recording eight songs in eight different cities, soaking up the local music history and making lyrical references to it in the process. Whether the album is the companion piece to the documentary series, or vice versa, is anyone’s guess.
In any event, when the time came to design the cover they called on Stephan Martiniere. He helped design the ‘Hunger Games’ and ‘Guardian of the Galaxy’ worlds, as well as the visuals for the ‘Myst 5’ video game and the long-running ‘Where’s Waldo?’ comic strip.
As Martiniere explains it: “They were looking at doing a cover that would be a kind of representation of all the cities where they had played. They knew my work and knew I’m particularly good at handling detailed city landscapes. I jumped at the opportunity because it was the first time I got to do a CD cover. I’m also a big fan of the Foo Fighters.”
He wasn’t even phased when the band explained that they also wanted to convert the design into eight separate images. They wanted each of the cities from the documentary series represented for a series of vinyl editions.
And naturally they wanted to incorporate the number eight into the cityscape as many times as possible.
Looking closely at the cover, it should not be too difficult to find a well-known landmark from each of the cities they visited as part of the process. This includes Seattle’s Space Needle, L.A.’s Hollywood sign, the Statue of Liberty, the Washington Memorial, etc.
The big question is: how many eights can you find in the artwork?
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