Name that tune: Can you guess these AI-generated album covers?

Unless you’ve been living in a caravan in the Sahara for the past year, you can’t fail to have noticed the rapidly growing popularity of new artificial intelligence tools that are able to create stunning images from mere text descriptions.

As a spot of festive fun, we decided to put two of the best-known AI art generators – Midjourney and Dalle-2 – to the test by feeding them a series of classic album titles and seeing if they could create fresh cover artwork. In some cases, these results are unsurprisingly literal – and yet many are almost as impressive as the originals. Well, almost.

Below is the artwork generated by these AI tools for 10 albums. These choices span the decades, right up to the modern day. Can you guess what each albums is inside two minutes? To help, we’ve provided a small clue with every piece of artwork. The answers are at the bottom of the page. (Hint: one of the 10 is a single rather than an album.)

Album 1

This artist is a vegetarian’s worst nightmare

Album 2

Well, it wouldn’t be Christmas without...

Album 3

The royal family might expect to see this weather forecast

Album 4

We’ve played this one strait down the middle

Album 5

Appropriately, this artist is on his farewell tour

Album 6

Who Knowles when it will be warm enough to enjoy this again?

Album 7

Don’t be a Muppet, this one’s easy if you know your metal

Album 8

This indie classic involves a little articulation

Album 9

Riding high with pan-European popularity

Album 10

This vampish artist encourage us all to explore the netherworld

The answers

1. Bat out of Hell – Meat Loaf

2. Mistletoe and Wine – Cliff Richard

3. Purple Rain – Prince

4. Brothers in Arms – Dire Straits

5. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road – Elton John

6. Lemonade – Beyonce

7. Master of Puppets – Metallica

8. Build a Rocket, Boys! – Elbow

9. There’s Nothing But Space, Man! – Sam Ryder

10. When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? – Billie Eilish