Album cover art as emoji — will it be the new craze?

It’s already got something resembling a cult following. That’s because even the most bored, cynical, and hungover observers can emerge with a smile twitching their lips after scrolling through a few of Wesley Stace’s emoji classic record album cover takeoffs.

All the viral internet ingredients are there: rock music, emoji, and — what else do you need? Well, for one, it doesn’t hurt that the finger-tapping conceptual artist (using the term loosely) is a well-known musician and author, who back in the day, called himself John Wesley Harding.

As noted in an interview with Fast Company, Stace came upon the cover art emoji idea by accident, while he was sending messages to pass time on the treadmill.

A random album cover (he thinks it was the Velvet Underground’s debut album featuring Andy Warhol’s banana graphic) appeared on his mobile phone showing just white squares. That inspired him to create similar emoji compositions for other albums and then tweet them.

There are now 51 album images — recorded in numbered tweets, no less — and Stace vows this is the end of it.

But with the viral internet, there’s never really an end to anything. So we have to ask, what’s next?

➤ Classic emoji album covers