10 Album Covers that Changed Everything!

July 11, 2008 by uphaa.blog

Long before MTV, performers expressed the visual dimension of their art through their album covers. Every music fan has his/her favorites, but several covers stand out for their brilliance, their impact and their ability to make as much of a statement as the music they represent. Every art form has its giants, and album cover art is no exception. The work of the designers featured here spans over 40 years of music.
THE SIXTIES: Before the 1960s, most albums featured portraits of musicians, instruments or musicians playing instruments. But the 1960’s spirit of exploration and experimentation found its way into music and, consequently, onto album covers.

1967 The Beatles, Sgt.Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

The Beatles’ album covers act as a kind of scrapbook for their mythmaking career: a serious With the Beatles, a hippie-esque Rubber Soul, a stripped down The White Album, and a funeral procession on Abbey Road. Each is a testament to the band’s creativity and insight into their culture. Yet no single album cover defines its era and its artists more than 1967’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
As with any good cult artifact, stories built around the album: Was Paul McCartney dead? (No.) Are the figures cardboard cutouts? (Yes.) Are those pot plants? (No.) The album was also legendarily difficult to execute—securing the faces of the band’s heroes and influences, from Alistair Crowley to guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi—was a logistical nightmare. Finding photographs of everyone, blowing them up to specifications and tinting them with color all turned out to be well worth the effort, however. The album became the single most recognizable (and, according to many, the greatest) album cover of all time.

1967 The Doors, Strange Days

With this album, The Doors touched on the decade’s surrealism with a Fellini-esque circus, but still escaped the psychedelia that typified its generation. The cover’s zoo of characters were a mix of professionals, amateurs and friends. The juggler is the photographer’s assistant. The trumpet player in the background was a cab driver who agreed to pose for $5 right before the image was shot.

1971 The Rolling Stones, Sticky Fingers

Rock n’ roll is sometimes used as a euphemism for sex, so it’s no wonder that the crotch has been the centerpiece of countless album covers. Yet, The Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers is the most famous and innovative example.
Sticky Fingers stands out as the best album cover of the decade. The cover features an Andy Warhol photograph of a well-endowed young man (contrary to legend, it was not Mick Jagger). A working zipper on the man’s pants could be opened to reveal another shot of the model, this time in his skivvies. The zipper left its mark on the album cover genre. Unfortunately, it also left its mark on the record itself (right in the middle of “Sister Morphine”).

1973 Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon

The classic simplicity of the prism on Dark Side is partly derived from a textbook illustration designed to show how light passes through a prism to form a spectrum. In a science book, however, a prism spectrum has seven colors. The album cover only has six; they got rid of indigo simply because it looked too much like purple.

1977 Sex Pistols, Never Mind the Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols

Nothing sums up the punk ethos better than this album. Like the record itself, the cover resembles a ransom note (actually designed with cut-up newspaper bits), boldly proclaiming the Pistols had stolen the music industry’s thunder … and didn’t plan on giving it back. The album was first refused in record shops because of the word “bollocks,” and the issue was later taken up in court.

1988 Jane’s Addiction, Nothing’s Shocking

This album was shocking in every way. A pair of Siamese twins joined at the hip and shoulder (actually plaster sculptures built by lead singer Perry Ferrell himself) sit naked on a love seat, their heads on fire.
According to Ferrell, it’s harder to get big flames burning on plaster twins than one might think. Nine national record chains refused to stock the album.

1988 Prince, Lovesexy

While heavy metal and punk were making waves in music during the 1980s, Prince pushed the envelope in a different direction. Celebrating both sexual freedom and ambiguity, Prince combined a feminine pose with overt phallic imagery. Believe it or not, the shot was spontaneous: the photographer Jean-Baptiste Mondino suggested Prince go nude just before the session.

1983 Def Leppard, Pyromania

This album made Tipper Gore’s “filthy fifteen” list when she crusaded against “porn-rock” in the mid-1980s. By organizing the Parents’ Music Resource Center, she encouraged the Recording Industry Association of America to adopt an explicit content labeling policy to protect minors.
THE NINETIES AND BEYOND: By the 1990s the CD had replaced the old vinyls of yesterday. While the classic square shape was back, the smaller size meant designers didn’t have as much space with which to work. Time will tell what images from the 1990s will stake their claim as classics. Some are immediate standouts.

1991 Metallica, Metallica

The rock band reflects their stripped-down sound with this none-more-black cover, known to fans simply as “the black album.” The album marked the band’s transition from heavy metal to mainstream.

1997 Prodigy, Fat of the Land

The rise of electronica brought acts like Prodigy to the fore, which featured a crab with brandished claws, symbolic of their aggressive beats and attitudes. The image was chosen at the last minute as an illustration of the album title: a crab coming out of the sea to enjoy the bounty of the land.

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