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The 100 Best Album Covers of All Time

From Biggie to Beyoncé to Bad Bunny, from Nirvana to Nas to Neil Young, this is the album art that changed the way we see music

100 best album covers of all time

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY MATTHEW COOLEY

The album is the best invention of the past century, hands down — but the music isn’t the whole story. The album cover has been a cultural obsession as long as albums have. Ever since 12-inch vinyl records took off in the 1950s, packaged in cardboard sleeves, musicians have been fascinated by the art that goes on those covers, and so have fans. When the Beatles revolutionized the game with the cover of Sgt. Pepper, in 1967, it became a way to make a visual statement about where the music comes from and why it matters. But the art of the album cover just keeps evolving.

So this is our massive celebration of that art: the 100 best album covers ever, from Biggie to Beyoncé to Bad Bunny, from Nirvana to Nas to Neil Young, from SZA to Sabbath to the Sex Pistols. We’ve got rap, country, jazz, prog, metal, reggae, flamenco, funk, goth, hippie psychedelia, hardcore punk. But all these albums have a unique look to go with the sound. The most unforgettable covers become part of the music — how many Pink Floyd fans have gotten their minds blown staring at the prism on the cover of Dark Side of the Moon, after using it to roll up their smoking materials?

What makes an album cover a classic? Sometimes it’s a portrait of the artist — think of the Beatles crossing the street, or Carole King in Laurel Canyon with her cat. Others go for iconic, semi-abstract images, like Led Zeppelin, Miles Davis, or My Bloody Valentine. Some artists make a statement about where they’re from, whether it’s R.E.M. repping the South with kudzu or Ol’ Dirty Bastard flashing his food-stamps card to salute the Brooklyn Zoo.

Many of these covers come from legendary photographers, designers, and artists, like Andy Warhol, Annie Leibovitz, Storm Thorgerson, Raymond Pettibon, and Peter Saville. Some have cosmic symbolism for fans to decode; others go for star power. But they’re all classic images that have become a crucial part of music history. And they all show why there’s no end to the world’s long-running love affair with albums.

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From Rolling Stone US

12

Kendrick Lamar, ‘To Pimp a Butterfly’

One of the most visually arresting examples of how album art has been revived in the modern era, Lamar’s acclaimed 2015 record displayed a black-and-white photo (by French photographer Denis Rouvre) of a house party outside of the White House. Lamar himself called it “just taking a group of homies who haven’t seen the world and putting them in these places that they haven’t necessarily seen … and them being excited about it.” But a closer examination reveals so much more: Lamar holding a baby, above a clearly deceased white judge, and a kid with a blurred-out middle finger, which just happens to be right above one of those odious “parental advisory — explicit content” labels. With their cash and booze, everybody’s either preparing for the revolution or celebrating a victory, which also makes it deliciously ambiguous. If hip-hop album art has a Sgt. Pepper, this is it. —D.B.

11

The Velvet Underground, ‘The Velvet Underground & Nico’

The only words on the cover of The Velvet Underground & Nico are Warhol’s name (the album’s “producer”) and “Peel slowly and see,” which were tantamount to a “drink me” instruction card in Alice in Wonderland. An arrow points at a yellow banana peel, which on closer inspection reveals itself as a decal. When you peel, you slowly see a pink banana. But it’s the LP sleeve’s inherent curiosity that sold the album to unsuspecting hippies completely unprepared for Lou Reed and John Cale’s discordant odes to heroin, sadomasochism, and the pressure of being a society girl. It’s only when you flip the LP that you get to see the band’s name. Warhol repeated the trick a few years later with the sleeve to the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers, in which you peel the zipper of a pair of jeans. —K.G.

10

Nirvana, ‘Nevermind’

Spencer Elden was just four-months-old when his parents briefly dunked him into a swimming pool and allowed photographer Kirk Weddle to snap a few shots for the cover of Nirvana’s Nevermind. The spur-of-the-moment session happened after Kurt Cobain’s original idea of using an image of a water birth was deemed too graphic. Suspecting the image might be problematic, Cobain offered to include a sticker over the baby’s penis that read “If you’re offended by this, you must be a closet pedophile.” One of the few people to take offense was Elden himself. After years of celebrating his association with it — even getting a Nirvana tattoo on his chest — he sued the band in 2021, claiming the photograph was child pornography. Many of the original charges were thrown out, but the matter is still pending before the courts. Like many Nirvana fans, Dave Grohl finds the entire thing absurd. “Listen,” he said in 2021, “he’s got a Nevermind tattoo. I don’t.”” —A.M.

9

Cyndi Lauper, ‘She’s So Unusual’

Cyndi Lauper’s thrift-store spin on old-school glamour was one of the most striking images of the early MTV era. For the cover of her debut album, she met up with Rolling Stone photographer Annie Leibvoitz on Brooklyn’s Coney Island boardwalk, looking to create something like “Jane Russell in the 1950s, with a specific South American feel.” The eye-popping use of bright, primary colors was Lauper’s idea, and she meticulously put her look together from clothes and accessories she’d found in the vintage boutique where she worked. The result was at once energetic and beautifully composed, a perfect distillation of the singer’s eclectic free spirit. When Leibovitz suggested she lift her skirt to reveal her slip, Lauper demurred. “I just felt like, ‘No, I don’t want to do that,’” Lauper recalled later. “’I want to do the strong dance-art thing.’” —J.D.

8

The Clash, ‘London Calling’

The Clash’s 1980 double album, London Calling, honored rock & roll’s sacred mission while blowing up some of its central myths. Its cover was an advertisement for that paradoxical power. The image of Paul Simonon smashing his bass was taken by photographer Pennie Smith during a 1979 show at New York’s Palladium. “I was sort of annoyed that the bouncers wouldn’t let the audience stand up out of their chairs,” Simonon explained. “So that frustrated me to the point that I destroyed this bass guitar. Unfortunately, you always sort of tend to destroy the things you love.” The script on the cover was a faithful homage to Elvis Presley’s 1956 RCA debut LP. “When the Elvis record came out, rock & roll was pretty dangerous,” Simonon told Rolling Stone years later. “And I supposed when we brought out our record, it was dangerous stuff, too.” —J.D.

7

Funkadelic, ‘Maggot Brain’

Even if the name Joel Brodsky doesn’t sound familiar, the album covers he shot starting in the Sixties will be: Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks, the Doors’ The Soft Parade, Aretha Franklin’s Let Me in Your Life, and all of those sensual Ohio Players LPs feature his photography on their front. But his most in-your-face work, literally, is on Funkadelic’s Maggot Brain. Opening with its 10-minute instrumental freakout by guitarist Eddie Hazel before slipping into deceptively unhinged psychedelic R&B, the album is already pretty out-there. But Brodsky’s photo of Black model Barbara Cheeseborough (who also made history by gracing the cover of the first issue of Essence) takes the packaging to another intense level. Is she being buried alive by racism? Are maggots eating the rest of her body before making their way to her brain? All of these decades later, it’s a mystery that keeps on giving. —D.B.

6

Patti Smith, ‘Horses’

Almost a decade after they’d met, Patti Smith enlisted Robert Mapplethorpe to shoot the cover of her now-classic debut album. “Robert knew where he wanted to take it, with natural light,” Smith later said. “We found the room; I knew what I wanted to wear. I rolled out of bed, put my clothes on; we ate at the Pink Tea Cup, we went to the place he wanted; he took, like, 12 pictures, and at about the eighth one, he said, “I have it.” I said, “How do you know?” and he said, “I just know.” Arista Records executives thought differently and wanted to change the artwork, worried the cover, shot in black and white with Smith in an androgynous pose, was too different from the current female singers of the time. Smith remarked, “I wasn’t thinking that I was going to break any boundaries. I just like dressing like Baudelaire.” —A.W.

5

The Notorious B.I.G., ‘Ready to Die’

Biggie’s debut album was an existential journey, and it was spelled out starkly with the album cover’s juxtaposition of a baby photo with a deeply pessimistic title. Helmed by legendary hip-hop graphic designer Cey Adams, the sparse black-and-red lettering has since become as iconic as the cover star. ”The title was so absurd that we didn’t have to hit you with these giant block letters,” Adams told Complex. “We thought we’d do something really delicate.” Despite assumptions on the contrary, the cover star was not a young Biggie nor his daughter, but a Bronx kid chosen from a modeling agency due to his likeness to the beloved MC. —C.W.

4

Pink Floyd, ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’

Originally, Pink Floyd wanted “something that’s really stylish, like a singular image, like a chocolate box” on the cover of The Dark Side of the Moon, as keyboardist Rick Wright told the design team Hipgnosis. One idea the Hipgnosis crew suggested was Marvel’s Silver Surfer, but the group rejected it. Then Hipgnosis’ Aubrey “Po” Powell found an image of a glass paperweight spreading rainbows around a room and showed it to his business partner, photographer Storm Thorgerson. “Storm looked at me and said, ‘I’ve got it: a prism. It’s all about Pink Floyd and their light show,’” Powell recalled. “In the early years, they were all about their light shows; nobody knew who they were.” They sketched it out, showed it to the band, and subsequently made one of the Seventies’ most iconic and intriguing images. (Incidentally, guitar virtuoso Joe Satriani got Marvel to agree to let the Silver Surfer for his Surfing With the Alien album in 1987 … until recently.) —K.G.

3

Sly and the Family Stone, ‘There’s a Riot Goin’ On’

With the hippie dream officially deferred, America’s utopian psychedelic party band turned inward, cynical, and claustrophobic. Their fifth album, There’s a Riot Goin’ On, was dark, disillusioned, and explicitly political, but Sly Stone insisted his stark red-white-and-black remake of the American flag on the cover was made from an idealistic place. “I wanted the flag to truly represent people of all colors. I wanted the color black because it is the absence of color. I wanted the color white because it is the combination of all colors. And I wanted the color red because it represents the one thing that all people have in common: blood,” he said. “Betsy Ross did the best she could with what she had. I thought I could do better.” —C.W.

2

The Beatles, ‘Abbey Road’

John, Paul, George, and Ringo spent the summer of 1969 making Abbey Road, and they knew it was a masterpiece. They joked about calling it Everest, and maybe flying out to the Himalayas for the photo. But as you can see in Get Back, the Fabs weren’t in the best shape to travel thousands of miles together. So they went for the simplest possible option: just crossing the street, right outside their recording studio. It took only 10 minutes, with photographer Ian McMillan. But it’s the ultimate Beatles portrait: a sunny day in London, a crosswalk, the world’s four most confident young men walking in line. They’re all peacocking: John in white, Ringo in black, Paul barefoot (and out of step), George all blue denim. Yet it’s a beautiful moment of come-together unity. It also made Abbey Road the most famous street in England, a tourist destination for fans to walk in the Beatles’ footsteps. —R.S.

1

Joy Division, ‘Unknown Pleasures’

There’s an uncanniness to the jagged, unpredictable angles on the cover of Joy Division’s debut album, Unknown Pleasures. Is it a mountain range? A graphical representation of brain waves? Why does it look so bleak? The mystery draws you in, and when you put the record on, with its bass-heavy atmospherics and frontman Ian Curtis’ overwhelming angst, the image makes a little more sense. The band’s guitarist Bernard Sumner found the artwork’s peaks and valleys while leafing through The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Astronomy. The image is a graphical representation of a pulsar, officially named CP1919. Designer Peter Saville reversed the color scheme to make it white on black. He left off the band’s name and the album title, making it all the more curious and able to transcend the music into the mainstream. The image has become an icon similar to The Dark Side of the Moon’s prism, but it represents so much more: goth mysticism, post-punk defiance, stark individualism. It’s now almost commonplace on T-shirts, in movies, and as parodies (Jaws anyone?). It’s a symbol for anyone wanting to show that they’re clued into something more introspective than the typical pop-culture reference. “Bernard doesn’t get nearly enough credit for that, because he couldn’t have made a better choice,” bassist Peter Hook has said. —K.G.