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- Funkadelic, ‘Maggot Brain’ (1971)
- Mary J. Blige, ‘My Life’ (1994) When she burst onto the scene in the ‘90s, Mary J. Blige wasn’t just a musical trend-setter with her groundbreaking mixture of sleek R&B and hip-hop – she provided a fashion blueprint for countless admirers and contemporaries.
- Emmylou Harris, ‘Blue Kentucky Girl’ (1979) Tapping into the same vintage vibes of Kenny Rogers’ The Gambler artwork and the 1973 blockbuster film The Sting, Blue Kentucky Girl features a simply dressed Emmylou Harris, acoustic guitar in hand, standing in front of a sepia-toned portrait of an old Kentucky saloon.
- Prince, ‘Dirty Mind’ (1980) If song titles like “Do It All Night” and “Head” weren’t enough of a clue, Prince posed half-naked in front of exposed bedsprings for the cover of his breakthrough third album Dirty Mind.
- The Beatles, ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ The cover of the Beatles' 1967 LP Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is, without a doubt, one of the most iconic images in the history of rock & roll.
- Pink Floyd – Dark Side Of The Moon. Until Dark Side Of The Moon, Pink Floyd album covers hadn't been very memorable. British design group Hipgnosis hadn't done very good jobs with Floyd's previous two albums, Obscured By Clouds and Meddle, but they had a good track record with other acts – and so the group hired them again in 1973 for Dark Side Of The Moon.
- Nirvana, ‘Nevermind’ Spencer Elden, the naked baby on the cover of Nirvana's Nevermind, has a great pick-up line with the ladies: "Want to see my penis . . .
- The Beatles, ‘Abbey Road’ Beatles nuts who believed that Paul McCartney died around 1967 and had been replaced by a dopplegänger found a lot to examine on the cover of Abbey Road.
- Brett Milano
- The Beastie Boys: Paul’s Boutique (design by Nathaniel Hornblower/Jeremy Shatan) This beautiful, panoramic view of Ludlow Street in NYC on the album cover of Paul’s Boutique did everything possible to put you right into the Beastie Boys’ world, making it look both funky and inviting.
- The Clash: London Calling (photo by Pennie Smith, design by Ray Lowry) A rare case where a parody (of the above Elvis cover) becomes a work of art in itself.
- Elvis Presley: Elvis Presley (design by Robertson & Fresch) RCA wasted no time in cleaning up Elvis, who’d look completely respectable on all future albums.
- The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (design by Peter Blake) Peter Blake’s pop-art assemblage on Sgt. Pepper’s famous album changed record covers forever, and kept many of us occupied for weeks trying to identify everybody at the ceremony.
- Elvis Presley: Elvis Presley
- The Beatles: Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
- The Velvet Underground & Nico: The Velvet Underground & Nico
- Frank Zappa/The Mothers of Invention: Weasels Ripped My Flesh
- Roxy Music: Roxy Music
- Pink Floyd: The Dark Side of The Moon
- David Bowie: Aladdin Sane
- Led Zeppelin: Houses of The Holy
- Fleetwood Mac: Rumours
- Prince: Purple Rain
Two simple words: “Elvis” and “Presley” (the latter barely hiding that controversial pelvis from view): that’s all it needed to say. Caught playing the guitar and singing during a performance at the Fort Homer Hesterly Armory, Tampa, Florida, on July 31, 1955, you can still feel the primal rock’n’roll energy from a young man ready to take over the ...
The Beatles, of course, had plenty of iconic album covers in their career, including Abbey Road and The White Album. But the most important and, at the time the most expensive album cover ever made, the Sgt. Pepper album cover remains a pop art masterpiece that has influenced everyone from Frank Zappa (We’re Only In It For The Money) to The Simpson...
If Peter Blake’s Sgt Pepper album cover is the most famous example of British pop art, then Andy Warhol’s design for The Velvet Underground’s debut, released that same year, remains one of the most famous from the US. It’s “Peel Slowly And See” banana peel was actually a sticker that revealed the phallic fruit beneath – a typically wry move from Wa...
As well as creating artwork for almost every Little Feat album, illustrator Neon Park’s distinctive style was put to unforgettable effect on a collection of Mothers material recorded from 1967-69. Having come across the September 1956 edition of Man’s Life, an adventure magazine whose cover pictured a man being attacked by weasels, Zappa took the “...
While many of the most memorable album covers of the early 70s were high-concept artworks designed by the likes of Hipgnosis or Roger Dean, Roxy Music’s approach was startlingly simple: glamorous imagery, more like a 50s fashion shoot than an album cover. Often romantically linked with frontman Bryan Ferry, each model had their intriguing own back ...
One of the most iconic album covers of all time, created by one of the most iconic design teams of all time. Hipgnosis’ main men, Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell, came up with the concept for The Dark Side Of The Moon, while their colleague George Hardie executed it: a prism refracting light into six of the seven the colours of the spectrum (ind...
Brian Duffy’s portrait remains the image most associated with David Bowie: his Aladdin Sanepersona an extension of Ziggy Stardust; the lightning bolt a representation of the “cracked actor” that Bowie felt he had become during his sudden rise to superstardom. Yet while Bowie exuded otherworldly powers at this point in his career, the cover photo wa...
Another one of Hipgnosis’ arresting album covers, the artwork for Houses Of The Holy was inspired by the ending of Childhood’s End, a 30s sci-fi novel by author Arthur C Clarke. A collage pieced together from several photos of two children scaling Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland, taken over a ten-day period, the artwork’s eerie colouring was a...
At a glance, the artwork for Fleetwood Mac’s best-selling album is simple: drummer Mick Fleetwood working up some theatrics with the none-more-melodramatic Stevie Nicks channelling the Rhiannon muse that consumed her for a period in the mid-70s. Oh, and then you see the nod to his manhood dangling proudly between his legs. Not just a schoolboy pran...
An unavoidable image (and album) from the mid-80s through the rest of the decade, Purple Rainintroduced the world to Prince as an enigmatic presence ready to disappear at will into the night, all Little Richard pompadour and wry smile, as if in on a joke that no one else could ever hope to understand. Photographer Ed Thrasher had previously snapped...
- Rainbow – ‘Rising’ (1976) Esteemed American fantasy artist Ken Kelly, who sadly passed away in 2022, created the visually striking painting on Rainbow's seminal second album 'Rising'.
- Pink Floyd – ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ (1973) Designed by Hipgnosis and George Hardie, Pink Floyd's 'The Dark Side of the Moon' artwork depicts light refracting from a triangular dispersive prism and it's based on an image Storm Thorgerson saw in a 1963 physics textbook.
- Iron Maiden – ‘Somewhere in Time’ (1986) Once again the creation of fabled Iron Maiden artist Derek Riggs, the 'Somewhere in Time' sleeve features a cyborg Eddie the Head holding a gun in a futuristic Blade Runner-esque cityscape.
- Iron Maiden – ‘Powerslave’ (1984) The brainchild of Derek Riggs, Iron Maiden's 'Powerslave' album has visually complex Egyptian-themed artwork. Riggs hid many humorous references for fans poring over the artwork including Mickey Mouse's face, the graffiti 'Indiana Jones was here 1941', the swear words 'Bollocks', and the sentences 'wot a load of crap' and 'Wot?
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Feb 16, 2024 · Procol Harum – Procol Harum (1967) The cover of Procol Harum’s debut album, released in 1967, is a breathtaking journey through a gothic wonderland. The artwork, with its intricate and Aubrey Beardsley-esque vibes, was created by Keith Reid’s girlfriend at the time, Dickinson, and it is truly one of a kind.
Jul 28, 2022 · 11: The Beatles: ‘Abbey Road’ (1969) Dashed off in just ten minutes during a break from recording, The Beatles’ Abbey road cover rivals other Beatles sleeves, such as Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and “The White Album”, for being the most famous album cover in the world.
