Out Of The Caribbean: Greensleeves: The First 100 Covers

A new exhibition at the Museum of Youth Culture in Camden, the world’s first museum dedicated to the lives of teenagers and young people, is showcasing Reggae and Dancehall sleeve art as design history in its own right.

Greensleeves: The First 100 Covers is staged by One Love Books and Greensleeves Records in partnership with the museum and curated by Alexander Newman, known to collectors as DJ Al Fingers, drawing on his own book of the same name.  On display are the iconic label’s first hundred album covers, flyers, photographs, and preparatory artwork from its archive. Featuring artists including Dennis Brown and Eek-A-Mouse to Yellowman and Sister Nancy, many of the sleeves were drawn by British illustrator Tony McDermott.

The Greensleeves label traces back to November 1975, when a small record shop opened in West Ealing, London, before founders Chris Cracknell and Chris Sedgwick relocated to Shepherd’s Bush and officially launched the label in 1977. A site later honoured with a blue plaque in 2023.

By the late 1970s and 80s, Greensleeves had grown into a major channel for the Jamaican sound reaching global audiences, helping establish the rub-a-dub style and pushing Dancehall to the forefront of the genre. Its first LP, Dr Alimantado’s ‘Best Dressed Chicken in Town‘, became one of its earliest landmark releases, and its pull into the mainstream peaked when Shaggy’s cover of ‘Oh Carolina‘ hit No. 1 in 1993.

None of this was incidental; the exhibition articulates how much the impact of the music and how far it travelled was down to how it looked, with sleeves that gave Reggae and Dancehall an instantly recognisable identity wherever they landed.  As an element of design and artistic work, it has rarely been credited the way it deserves. 

Greensleeves The First 100 Covers exhibition runs to 26th July at The Museum of Youth Culture, London. Find out more here.