Classic Album Cover Designs – A Top 5
An album cover isn’t packaging, it’s actually a work of art; and in some cases, an iconic work of art that can define an era or a cultural movement. The record jacket is a key component of the tactile, analogue experience, and part of vinyl’s enduring appeal in a world of digital streaming.
Compiling a Top 5 List of classic vinyl cover designs is a tall order, record jacket art has tapped into such a rich creative seam - designs meant to shock, stun, delight and provoke. Nevertheless, in no particular order, please find my selection for your consideration:
Nevermind Record Cover
Nevermind sold over 30 million copies and is widely considered to be one of the greatest albums of all time. The cover now resides in the Museum of Modern Art’s collection and is regarded as a design classic.
Kurt Cobain originally wanted an image of a baby being born underwater, this idea morphed into a baby swimming underwater with the addition of a fishhook and dollar bill bringing menace and materialism into the frame. The whole process was pre-internet and pre-photoshop - the wavy Nevermind title font was achieved by wiggling a typed imaged through a Xerox printer.
In 2021 the iconic record cover again made the news headlines when Spencer Elden, the naked baby on the cover, sued the band for 'intentionally commercially marketing Spencer's child pornography and leveraging the shocking nature of his image to promote themselves and their music at his expense'. Elden, now 30 and an artist himself, has had a complicated relationship with the Nevermind record sleeve, re-creating the photo several times as a teenager and adult - always wearing swimming trunks - to mark Nevermind's launch anniversaries. However, he has got more conflicted about his notoriety as he grew older. He may have a point, if you don’t like mum showing your naked baby photos, imagine being exposed to approx. 30 million people. Commenting in an interview, Spencer mused 'It'd be nice to have a quarter for every person that has seen my baby penis”.
Abbey Road Record Cover
The Beatles have a number of candidates for an album jacket Top 5, from the stark simplicity of the White album to the multifaceted montage of Sergeant Pepper. However, I’m going to put forward Abbey Road – the cover that launched a thousand memes and a whole conspiracy theory. At first glance the image is pretty pedestrian – figuratively and literally. It pictures the four men - George Harrison, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and John Lennon - striding along a zebra crossing situated on Abbey Road, outside EMI studios in London.
But forensic examination by hardcore fans gradually resulted in the circulation of a bizarre conspiracy theory that Paul McCartney had, in actual fact, been killed in a car accident in 1966, and had been replaced by a lookalike. The visual clues being that Paul was out of step with his bandmates, walking barefoot and the image represented a funeral procession. According to designer John Kosh, “The reason he kicked his shoes off was because they were too tight”. McCartney parodied the whole affair in the title and album artwork for his 1993 concert album Paul Is Live.
The Velvet Underground & Nico Record Cover
On this record cover, Warhol blended pop art with rock music. Warhol served a stint as the manager and patron saint of the Velvet Underground. He was the only formally credited producer on the album but had very little direct influence beyond paying for the recording sessions.
That cover, however, was unmistakingly his project. Early versions of his famous banana print cover said "peel slowly and see," and there was a peel-away banana sticker that revealed a pink banana underneath. Yes, the banana was shorthand for sex long before the aubergine. Pimping up the fruit this way was actually tricky for printers to pull off (the time it took to perfect the peel was part of the reason behind the album’s delayed release).
With the album including songs like "Heroin" and "I'm Waiting For The Man," some have also interpreted the album's cover as a reference to the old school boy rumour that drying and smoking banana peel will get you high. By the way, it doesn’t.
Blackstar Record Cover
Bowie also has a number of jacket designs eligible for any Top 5 record cover list. He was an artist who understood the value of the image on a record cover and wanted graphics that provoked discussion, controversy and delight. The lightning-streaked Ziggy Stardust portrait adorning Aladdin Sane is probably the most enduring image of Bowie, the rock star.
Bowie’s parting gift to fans was the album Blackstar. On first glance, the anonymous, monochrome cover is very sober, simple affair. In an interview, cover designer, Jonathan Barnbrook commented “It's subsided a bit now, but a lot of people said it was a bullshit cover when it came out, that it took five minutes to design. But I think there is a misunderstanding about the simplicity.”
On further examination, fans were delighted to discover that Blackstar's art was full of symbolism and hidden imagery revealed by different light sources. These playful Easter Eggs literally invited people to look at the art from a different point of view. The Blackstar cover is imbued with a sense of mortality and beautiful, terrible darkness – an arresting, final goodbye from the Starman.
Rio Record Cover
And finally, may I present the Rio, the 1982, double platinum album from Duran Duran. Its bright purple canvas encapsulates a decade when shoulder pads were huge, greed was good and mullets were acceptable.
The artwork was created by artist Patrick Nagel, an artist celebrated in the 80s for a distinctive, sharp linear style and intense stylisation. Nagel's work has been compared to the simplicity of Japanese woodblock prints and Art Deco. He would start with a photograph and work down, always simplifying and removing elements which he felt were unnecessary to achieve a flat, bold image. His portraits are predominantly of beautiful, highly sexualised women, which could prove problematic today, although fans argue that the portrait subjects are presented as empowered and aloof. Robert Palmer even brought the Nagel women to life in his video for "Addicted To Love."
Duran Duran’s bassist, John Taylor, wrote in his autobiography that on first seeing the canvas, he thought, "there she was, Rio, the girl who was dancing on the sand". Her cherry ice cream smile still transports millions of fans back to the 80s and she deserves her place in this Top 5.