American Life - Artwork and Release

Artwork and Release

French design team M/M Paris (Michael Amzalag and Mathias Augustyniak) were responsible for the artwork of American Life. The duo are best known for their collaborations with musicians. One of the first rumored titles of the album was Ein Sof, which Madonna had mentioned in an interview with Larry King in October 2002, during the promotion for Swept Away. In mid-January 2003, in Los Angeles, the photo shoot for the album was done by photographer Craig McDean. McDean had already worked with Madonna for the portfolio for Vanity Fair magazine in October 2002; this work had a military theme, with Madonna posing in dark greens and blacks, combat boots, and holding guns. Her hair was dyed dark brown, and on the cover of the album, Madonna is wearing a beret and is almost a copy of the famous image of Che Guevara. In an interview to the Italian version of TV show Top of the Pops she said that the choice to emulate Che's image was because she likes what he represents and was feeling revolutionary when she wrote the album. Also, a cause of the paramilitary theme, the dyed hair and the artistic composition, was compared with Patty Hearst.

American Life is Madonna's second album to bear a "Parental Advisory" label after Erotica (1992), due the strong profanity used in the title song. On December 9, 2003, Warner Music France released a box set version containing both the album and the remix collection Remixed & Revisited in a cardboard sleeve entitled Édition Spéciale 2CDs: American Life + Remixed & Revisited. To counter illegal Internet downloads of the album's songs both before and after the album's release, Madonna's associates created a number of false song files of similar length and size. Some of these files delivered a brief message from Madonna saying "What the fuck do you think you're doing?" followed by minutes of silence. Madonna's website hacker added a message appearing on the Main Page, saying "This is what the fuck I think I'm doing..." followed by download links for each of the album's songs. The website was closed after the attack for about 15 hours.