The Art of the LP: Classic Album Covers 1955-1995

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This album cover was more of a multimedia assemblage, incorporating the die-cut edges and the marble-swirled disc into the overall design and giving an instant visual image to the top-hatted Dave Mason. 50: Elton John: Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only the Piano Player (design by David Larkham and Michael Ross) 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. It also made it essential to own the original, fold-out vinyl.

As it turns out, The Beatles were just too lazy to go to Mt. Everest – yes, that was the original plan – so they came up with something just as memorable by leaving the studio and crossing the street, resulting in the famous Abbey Road album cover. It’s since gone done as one of the greatest of all time. 69: Marvin Gaye: I Want You (design by Ernie Barnes) Several months before working on the album I watched a documentary that touched on the similarities between shapes created incymatic(sound wave visualisation) experiments and the structures of primitive lifeforms. The documentary speculated that perhaps sound could have had something to do with the origin of life,” Errol F Richardson, who worked on the design, told us. “When I first heard the album title, I immediately thought about the possibility that sound could be, in a way, our ancestor.” The Nominees and Winners of the Best Art Vinyl Award feature in numerous exhibitions in the UK and across Europe, and can be viewed on artvinyl.com. All of the designs will be displayed in the unique Art Vinyl Flip Frame which allows instant access to the music and additional inner sleeve designs.

With all four bandmembers together in a bathtub, the cover said more about The Mamas & The Papas than what was probably intended. The toilet on the original cover of If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears also proved to be a no-no in 1966. The iconic cover for Who’s Next worked on two levels: first as a futuristic image of The Who against a monolith; and second, when you noticed their zippers and realized what the guys had been doing. 21: Uriah Heep: The Magician’s Birthday (design by Roger Dean) This Reagan-era concept album makes its visual point by using a photo of Beatles records being burned that followed John Lennon’s “more popular than Jesus” remarks. But in this case, the photo is a Mobius strip, and the album they’re burning is the very one they’re standing in. 41: Taylor Swift: 1989 (design by Austin Hale and Amy Fucci) The album cover for Hüsker Dü’s final studio album is one of those cases where a cover is exactly like the album: vivid, colorful and jarring in a welcoming way. 44: Chelsea Wolfe: Hiss Spun (design by John Crawford) The perfect cover for a cool, sensual and futuristic concept album, this captures Janelle Monáe’s depth and mystery and is a beautiful piece of art in its own right. 26: Miles Davis: Bitches Brew (design by Mati Klarwein)

Beggars Banquet is a rare case where an album’s two famous covers really complement each other. Put the notorious bathroom cover together with the engraved invitation on the US replacement, and you’ve got the yin and the yang of The Rolling Stones at the time. The more commonly known US cover is nice enough but makes it look like a conventional singer-songwriter album and Kate Bushis anything but. We’re referring to the original UK “kite” cover that introduced the strangeness and sensuality that Bush was all about. 27: Janelle Monáe: Dirty Computer (design by Joe Perez )

Reviews

Smashing Pumpkins’ album covers were often softer and prettier than the music, but this cover (created by Billy Corgan’s then-girlfriend) is the perfect translation of the obsessively romantic theme of Adore. 31: Ohio Players: Climax (design by Joel Brodsky) sure,” LP jokes. “I was sitting at the feet of these giants.” Seeing their songwriting breakthrough It was weird, it was witty, it was Warhol. The famous minimalism of The Velvet Underground & Nico peel-away banana album cover became an influence on punk visual style many years later and remains one of the greatest album covers. The cover for Ten Out Of 10 remains one of Hipgnosis’ fiendishly clever 10cc covers and one of their more overlooked albums. Here they’re on the 10th floor of a hotel standing at the precipice, and only one of the guys seems concerned about it. 54: Thelonious Monk: Underground (photo by Horn Grinner Studios; art direction/design: John Berg and Richard Mantel)