This album cover involves a rather toned down, reggae feel in contrast to Paloma Faith's album cover and this allows a very different way of perceiving its meaning.
The background is made up out of a block-coloured font that appears wonky and the wrong way around, portraying this almost old-school tone, perhaps being the artist's perception of how the album is going to play out for the audience. This is then contrasted with the use of white, handwritten font that appears more modernised in comparison - the clock with the title going clockwise and use of the number '2' instead of 'to' - and this portrays the essence of time as significant for the album. In terms of colour, ombre is used to produce this half-old photograph, half-digital photograph of the artist sat in the centre of the image, which links back to the idea of time being significant to the artist within the album. Additionally, it is known that the song "Shelter in the Rain" was written for his first wife whom has died of cancer so this idea of having the time to love fits in with the artist's perception of knowing the right time to love the people around you. So far, the album is conforming to the genre characteristics as it portrays a calming tone that has its own personality and meaning formed by the artist. Having the artist in the centre of the cover has him in the middle of the shot as an important figure and puts to light the clothing worn by him (all black, long-sleeved collared shirt, trousers - smart but casual) that portrays the stereotypical dress worn by soul singers of the 1950's onwards.
Overall, the image replicates the toned down feeling that is meant to heavily focus not on visuals but on the artist's personality being portrayed on the album cover and the meanings behind certain symbols created to aid this.
The back cover of the album is not all that different and follows a similar theme to the front cover, keeping it old-school and focused on the music. The large font used to list the tracks prove to show that the visuals are still unimportant to the artist and that the song titles are the focus. However, the repetitive photographs of the artist stands out as it almost looks like a stop motion set of pictures of him singing. The artist appears to be looking down and at the tracks (the top and bottom one looking up/down) as though singing at the songs themselves which is an interesting idea for an album cover. There is nothing that subverts within this cover as it is very focused on promoting the calming tone of the album and selling the artist for his vocals rather than the visuals. This is further backed up with the text "Produced by Stevie Wonder", written in a completely different font to the rest of the cover so it stands out. It portrays another skill the artist has and that this album has a whole lot of meaning and personality into it seeing as it was made and sung by him and it's clear that the audience are meant to acknowledge that.
Overall, the artist doesn't bother too much with visuals on the back cover as much as the track listing itself and doesn't indicate controversy trying to be made. It remains clear that the main focus is to flow with the idea of the old-school, calm tone that most likely represents the sound of the album itself and the artist only wanted that to be important to his audience.
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