Really iconic album covers don’t simply outline an album, they outline an period, a technology, and, in some instances, a whole musical style. Typically they do all three: what’s The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Membership album cowl, if not the last word manifestation of 60s psychedelia for the “peace and love” crowd?
Typically album covers are helped on their strategy to iconic standing due to the musicians they characteristic: photogenic stars, reminiscent of Elvis Presley, David Bowie, or Prince, whose godlike photos are burned into our retinas. Different iconic album covers are envisioned by artistic masterminds. The agency Hipgnosis outlined the 70s with their many optical illusions. Peter Saville made Manufacturing unit Information a sensation with the radio waves of Pleasure Division’s Unknown Pleasures (and lots of extra). Andy Warhol, in the meantime, dreamed up The Rolling Stones’ iconic blue denims crotch and zipper on Sticky Fingers. The most effective album covers see these graphic designs bypass linear pondering and emerge with a picture that could be a bona fide murals in its personal proper.
Whereas artwork may be a matter of style, lasting legacy is one thing that’s extra simply measured. Our listing of the 25 most iconic album covers of all time is probably not exhaustive, however it definitely reveals why album covers should be held in as excessive a regard as extra conventional modes of paintings.
Whilst you’re studying, hearken to our Best Album Covers playlist right here.
Elvis Presley: Elvis Presley (1956)
Two easy phrases: “Elvis” and “Presley” (the latter barely hiding that controversial pelvis from view): that’s all it wanted to say. Caught taking part in the guitar and singing throughout a efficiency on the Fort Homer Hesterly Armory, Tampa, Florida, on July 31, 1955, you’ll be able to nonetheless really feel the primal rock’n’roll vitality from a younger man able to take over the world. Twenty years later, The Conflict and photographer Pennie Smith felt there was nonetheless none extra rock’n’roll, and nicked the thought for the epochal London Calling vinyl album cowl.
The Beatles: Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Membership Band (1967)
The Beatles, in fact, had loads of iconic album covers of their profession, together with Abbey Highway and The White Album. However crucial and, on the time the most costly album cowl ever made, the Sgt. Pepper album cowl stays a pop artwork masterpiece that has influenced everybody from Frank Zappa (We’re Solely In It For The Cash) to The Simpsons (The Yellow Album). Staged by British artist Peter Blake and his then-wife, Jann Haworth, the Sgt Pepper album cowl depicted 58 completely different folks, chosen by John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Peter Blake, Jann Haworth and London artwork seller Robert Fraser, presenting a captivating cross-section of cultures, significance, and every Beatle’s particular person pursuits like Marlon Brando, Karl Marx, and Marilyn Monroe.
Click on right here for an interactive Sgt Pepper cowl to find who’s who on one of the crucial essential album covers of all time.
The Velvet Underground & Nico: The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967)
If Peter Blake’s Sgt Pepper album cowl is essentially the most well-known instance of British pop artwork, then Andy Warhol’s design for The Velvet Underground’s debut, launched that very same 12 months, stays one of the crucial well-known from the US. It’s “Peel Slowly And See” banana peel was truly a sticker that exposed the phallic fruit beneath – a usually wry transfer from Warhol, although the joke was on anybody who eliminated the sticker. Totally intact copies of the VU’s debut album at the moment are vastly collectible rarities.
Frank Zappa/The Moms Of Invention: Weasels Ripped My Flesh (1970)
In addition to creating paintings for nearly each Little Feat album, illustrator Neon Park’s distinctive type was put to unforgettable impact on a set of Moms materials recorded from 1967-69. Having come throughout the September 1956 version of Man’s Life, an journey journal whose cowl pictured a person being attacked by weasels, Zappa took the “Weasels Ripped My Flesh” caption for a title and challenged Parks to make one thing “worse than this”. The outcome: a ugly spoof advert for an electrical razor.
Roxy Music: Roxy Music (1972)
Whereas lots of the most memorable album covers of the early 70s had been high-concept artworks designed by the likes of Hipgnosis or Roger Dean, Roxy Music’s strategy was startlingly easy: glamorous imagery, extra like a 50s style shoot than an album cowl. Typically romantically linked with frontman Bryan Ferry, every mannequin had their intriguing personal again story. Having appeared as a Bond woman in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Kari-Ann Muller featured on the entrance of Roxy Music for the sum of simply £20. Latterly a yoga trainer, she went on to marry Chris Jagger, whose brother has an attention-grabbing story of his personal…
Pink Floyd: The Darkish Facet Of The Moon (1973)
One of the iconic album covers of all time, created by one of the crucial iconic design groups of all time. Hipgnosis’ fundamental males, Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell, got here up with the idea for The Darkish Facet Of The Moon, whereas their colleague George Hardie executed it: a prism refracting mild into six of the seven the colors of the spectrum (indigo is lacking). The triumvirate of sunshine beam, prism and spectrum apparently stood for 3 points of the band and their music: bold stage lighting, Darkish Facet’s lyrics and keyboardist Richard Wright’s request that Hipgnosis create one thing daring but easy. Job executed, then.
David Bowie: Aladdin Sane (1973)
Brian Duffy’s portrait stays the picture most related to David Bowie: his Aladdin Sane persona an extension of Ziggy Stardust; the lightning bolt a illustration of the “cracked actor” that Bowie felt he had develop into throughout his sudden rise to superstardom. But whereas Bowie exuded otherworldly powers at this level in his profession, the duvet photograph was taken within the very earthly confines of Brian Duffy’s studio in Primrose Hill, London. The teardrop on Bowie’s clavicle was an addition of Duffy’s after the shoot: an ideal contact that makes Bowie appear each mysterious and tender on the similar time.
Led Zeppelin: Homes Of The Holy (1973)
One other one in all Hipgnosis’ arresting album covers, the paintings for Homes Of The Holy was impressed by the ending of Childhood’s Finish, a 30s sci-fi novel by writer Arthur C Clarke. A collage pieced collectively from a number of pictures of two youngsters scaling Big’s Causeway in Northern Eire, taken over a ten-day interval, the paintings’s eerie colouring was an unintentional impact that gave the picture a suitably otherworldly really feel. One other unintended after-effect: some shops discovered the bare youngsters too controversial and refused to inventory the file.
Fleetwood Mac: Rumours (1977)
At a look, the paintings for Fleetwood Mac’s best-selling album is easy: drummer Mick Fleetwood working up some theatrics with the none-more-melodramatic Stevie Nicks channelling the Rhiannon muse that consumed her for a interval within the mid-70s. Oh, and then you definitely see the nod to his manhood dangling proudly between his legs. Not only a schoolboy prank within the spur of the second, the balls had been truly bathroom chains that Mick pulled from a cistern and positioned between his legs earlier than performing one of many band’s earliest gigs – and there they might stay for future dwell performances, presumably dangling dangerously near the drummer’s tom-toms.
Prince: Purple Rain (1984)
An unavoidable picture (and album) from the mid-80s by means of the remainder of the last decade, Purple Rain launched the world to Prince as an enigmatic presence able to disappear at will into the night time, all Little Richard pompadour and wry smile, as if in on a joke that nobody else might ever hope to grasp. Photographer Ed Thrasher had beforehand snapped the equally flamboyant Jimi Hendrix on a motorcycle (a shot that graced the posthumous compilation album South Saturn Delta), whereas, if you happen to look intently on the bike, you’ll see the androgyny image that will later discover echoes within the “Love Symbol” that Prince modified his identify to.
Bruce Springsteen: Born In The USA (1984)
Impressed by Born In The USA’s title monitor, Rolling Stone photographer Annie Leibovitz shot Springsteen in pink, white and blue, earlier than a backdrop of the American flag, creating the last word American everyman photograph for the last word American everyman album. Nonetheless, just like the album’s title monitor – which has been open to political misinterpretation over time – the paintings drew some damaging connotations. Some thought The Boss was relieving himself on the flag – an unintentional results of Springsteen selecting, from quite a few pictures, “the picture of my ass” as a result of it “looked better than the picture of my face”.
Grace Jones: Island Life (1985)
As a mannequin, actress, and songwriter, Grace Jones’ profession is suffering from iconic photograph shoots, from downtown disco snaps to uptown journal spreads and, in fact, an incredible album cowl or two. Whereas virtually all of her file sleeves qualify for “iconic” standing, the 1985 assortment Island Life stays arguably her most well-known. Initially printed in a 1978 version of New York Journal, the picture was created by Jones’ then accomplice, designer and photographer Jean-Paul Goode, who normal Jones’ implausible posture from a composite of a number of images.
The Smiths: Meat Is Homicide (1985)
The Smiths had been at all times helpful with an attention grabbing picture – taken collectively, their album covers quantity to a gallery of black-and-white photos with histories as compelling as Morrissey’s lyrics. For Meat Is Homicide, the devoutly vegan Morrissey sought to attract a parallel between meat-eating and warfare, selecting a controversial picture of a Vietnam Battle soldier whose helmet had been emblazoned with the album’s title. Not that the unique photograph bore the “meat is murder” slogan. The 20-year-old Marine Corporal Michael Wynn, pictured on the album cowl, had been photographed on 21 September 1967 in Da Nang, South Vietnam, throughout Operation Ballistic Cost – and the slogan he’d truly written on his personal helmet turned a countercultural catchphrase on its head with the hippie-baiting “make war not love”.
NWA: Straight Outta Compton (1988)
From sound to lyrical content material and imagery, Straight Outta Compton outlined the rising gangsta rap style, and its paintings has gone down in historical past. Chatting with CNN years after, photographer Eric Poppleton, then simply out of college, put the picture’s affect all the way down to the truth that, “You’re taking the perspective of someone who is about to be killed… We don’t even print that stuff in newspapers.” Poppleton nonetheless doesn’t know if Eazy-E’s gun was loaded – although it was definitely actual (“There wasn’t anything fake back then,” he instructed NME), brandished by Eazy whereas Poppleton and the group – with one-time sixth member, producer Arabian Prince, in tow – ducked down an alleyway to seize the shot on the fly.
Nirvana: Nevermind (1991)
The controversial cowl of Nevermind was interpreted by many as an harmless band reaching for the almighty greenback when in actuality (in accordance with Geffen Information artwork director Robert Fisher) it was the results of Kurt Cobain’s fascination with a documentary on water births. Clearly his curiosity in maternal themes would crop up once more for the band’s follow-up, In Utereo. Whereas the label pushed for a canopy sans child anatomy, Cobain’s proposed compromise was a sticker overlaying that will learn, “If you’re offended by this, you must be a closet pedophile.” The duvet design has impressed infinite satires.
A Tribe Referred to as Quest: The Low Finish Concept (1991)
Whereas rock music is suffering from logos, the Queens rap collective A Tribe Referred to as Quest inadvertently created one of the crucial recognizable symbols in hip-hop with the duvet of their jazz-rap fusion masterpiece, The Low Finish Concept. Impressed by the provocative covers of previous Ohio Gamers albums, it featured a nude mannequin bedecked in DayGlo physique paint that’s without delay alluring and Afrocentric on the similar time. The daring colours and funky imagery lent itself to Tribe’s artistic imaginative and prescient on what would develop into their breakout album. The painted woman would later seem on subsequent Tribe releases and certainly impressed the equally provocative Stankonia album artwork.
Inexperienced Day: Dookie (1994)
Illustrated album covers had been round for many years by 1994, however when it got here to conjuring up cowl artwork for Inexperienced Day’s main label debut, artist Richie Bucher created a comic book guide type world that mirrored the Bay Space punk scene the band was birthed from. Half Mad Journal-style fold-in and The place’s Waldo? for the 90s various scene, you don’t want a magic decoder ring to identify the varied Easter Eggs hidden below the spray of dookie: from AC/DC’s Angus Younger to Huge Star‘s Alex Chilton, Patti Smith, the University Of California Marching Band and elements of Ramones’ Rocket To Russia cowl artwork, it’s an actual Who’s Who of Oakland’s Telegraph Avenue.
Weezer: Weezer (aka “Blue Album”) (1994)
Both Weezer has a slavish devotion to monochromatic color schemes or Rivers Cuomo has synaesthesia; both method, since releasing their iconic “Blue Album” in 1994, their discography represents a rainbow of releases that features their “Green” (2001), “Red” (2008), and “White” albums (2016). Whereas many early 90s releases experimented with inventive imagery, Weezer’s aesthetic was decidedly extra “60s Sears family photo”, in accordance with former Geffen A&R man Todd Sullivan. After the album’s launch, many identified its similarity to The Feelies’ cowl for Loopy Rhythms, when in actuality, Cuomo was aiming for the clear-cut boy band picture of The Seashore Boys. In consequence, Weezer not solely had an iconic cowl on their fingers, however predicted the normcore motion.
The Smashing Pumpkins: Mellon Collie And The Infinite Disappointment (1995)
Instantly recognizable, the dreamy, Victorian-esque cowl of The Smashing Pumpkins’ landmark 1995 album captures a lady in perpetual eye-roll, or a glance of ecstasy that she’s held onto for over 20 years. It completely summarises the aimlessness youth to which Corgan was preaching, and the fanciful imagery matches the grand ambitions of the sprawling, 28-track album. From only a collection of crude, faxed sketches, illustrator John Craig (former designer for Mercury Information and the person behind a few of Rod Stewart’s most iconic sleeves) created a composite picture utilizing a celestial background from an previous youngsters’s encyclopaedia, together with the physique from a Raphael portray of Saint Catherine Of Alexandria, and the girl’s face from an 18th-century portray by Jean-Baptiste Greuze entitled The Memento (Constancy). Although you don’t want an Artwork Historical past diploma to understand this enduring picture.
Beck: Odelay (1996)
Some album covers are supposed to convey deeper musical themes and their imagery is meticulously conceived, whereas others are simply glad accidents. In Beck’s case, the considerably inscrutable cowl picture of Odelay took place after he was proven a picture of a uncommon, Hungarian breed of herding canine known as a Komondor. After he couldn’t cease laughing on the picture that he described as a “bundle of flying Udon noodles attempting to leap over a hurdle”, and with the deadline for the album only a day away, he determined it could make the right cowl and left it open for interpretation. Is it a bale of hay or a flying mop? The paintings has develop into the last word Rorschach take a look at.
The Roots: Issues Fall Aside (1999)
On the daybreak of the Millennium, nearly all of hip-hop album covers weren’t the optimum automobile for social commentary. On the time, The Roots had been nonetheless one thing of an underground act, however that was all about to alter with their seminal album and provocative cowl – or covers –for his or her breakthrough album. The Philly outfit launched 5 restricted version album artworks that includes well-known pictures that depicted “visual failure in society”, from a murdered mafia boss to a burning church, a child crying amid the rubble in Shanghai after WWII to the 90s famine in Somalia, and, most famously, two ladies being chased by police throughout the 60s riots within the Mattress-Stuy neighborhood in Brooklyn. Whereas most of The Roots’ earlier covers simply depicted the band, Issues Fall Aside was a step in the direction of social activism each of their music and imagery.
Blink-182: Enema Of The State (1999)
Because the face of the pop-punk explosion, Blink-182 knew their viewers nicely and catered to it accordingly with their specific cowl to their 1999 hit album Enema Of The State – a lot to the delight of their prepubescent male followers. Grownup actress and unique dancer Janine Lindemulder posed as a nurse for the duvet, a lot to the chagrin of the American Purple Cross, who demanded the band take away their brand from the paintings, because it was a “violation of the Geneva Convention”. Lindemulder would reprise her nurse function within the band’s video for ‘What’s My Age Once more’, due to music turned porn publicist Brian Gross. The duvet and accompanying video made Blink-182 well-known and introduced the grownup trade to center America.
The Strokes: Is This It (2001)
Hailed because the leaders of the “great-rock-revival”, The Strokes’ subscribed to the age-old mannequin of “sex sells” for his or her S&M-inspired cowl. A mixture of Helmut Newton style pictures and Spinal Faucet’s Scent The Glove, the evocative cowl was shot by photographer Colin Lane, who used his girlfriend because the mannequin and a leftover prop to create the stark picture. When it got here to promoting the album within the States, nevertheless, shops weren’t having it, and the duvet was modified to a close-up picture of subatomic particle tracks in a bubble chamber. Chalk this one up as one other win for puritanical America.
Amy Winehouse: Again To Black (2006)
As an artist whose private picture is inseparable from her music, it was solely becoming that the promising younger singer ought to grace her personal album cowl. Again To Black can be her introduction to America and the remainder of the world, and far had modified since her UK debut, Frank. Along with her cascading hair, sleeve tattoos, and rockabilly make-up, even merely sitting in a chair appeared as an act of defiance, albeit with a touch of vulnerability, along with her fingers tucked between her legs. This indelible picture would come to outline Amy Winehouse’s legacy and impressed numerous younger women to undertake her girl-group-member-gone-bad type.
Katy Perry: Teenage Dream (2010)
In widespread music, there’s no scarcity of scantily-clad ladies on album covers, however it’s often the area of male musicians. At all times one for pushing the envelope utilizing her personal picture, Katy Perry teamed up with Los Angeles-based artist Will Cotton to create her personal pin-up paintings for the duvet of her hit album, Teenage Dream. The outcome was the cartoonish sensuality of Artwork Frahm meets Candyland camp, and it has formed Perry’s Technicolor universe ever since. Cotton was additionally the artistic director for Perry’s ‘California Gurls’ video, which established Perry’s signature trademark of tongue-in-cheek intercourse enchantment.
Uncover essentially the most controversial album covers of all time.
