1000 Record Covers

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Some of Elton’s greatest album covers were a bit splashy, others a little somber. The one for Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only the Piano Player was just right, drawing from his soon-to-be-legendary love of movies. Rush’s greatest album covers expressed both their grand concepts and their cerebral sense of humor. In this staged cover for Moving Pictures, which features many of the characters from the songs, we detect at least three different visual plays on the album’s title. PiL’s follow-up to their famous Metal Box album cover was even cooler, showing non-performing bandmember Jeanette Lee with a rose in her teeth, a weapon in her hand, and a murderous look in her eyes. 87: The Velvet Underground: The Velvet Underground & Nico (design by Andy Warhol)

Jeff Bridges’ got nothing on the original “The Dude,” the effortlessly cool and quixotic album cover character that appears on Quincy Jones’ genre-blending solo debut. Q always had an ear for talent – as his cross-cultural LP proved – but he also had an eye for design. (He spotted the eponymous “Dude” statue at an art gallery and took it home for inspiration.) 82: Cocteau Twins: Heaven or Las Vegas (design by Paul West)There were nearly as many copies of Alice Cooper’s School’s Out in 1970s high schools as there were actual school desks. Ten points if you got the original with the underwear inner sleeve. 65: Aerosmith: Draw the Line (design by Al Hirshfeld)

Ochs also provides us with a written preface to each decade of covers, a resume of key developments in popular music which is somewhat cursory and futile to say the least. 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) Psychedelic album covers were an art form in themselves, and the explosion of color (with the band looking suitably avuncular) made Cream’s Disraeli Gears one of the definitive ones. The designer also wrote one of the album’s most vivid lyrics on “Tales of Brave Ulysses.” Although each section here is divided by decade – Ochs makes some attempt to group album covers together based on similar image or artwork (often very tenuous) with varying degrees of success and to what purpose is unclear?Ocr tesseract 5.0.0-alpha-20201231-10-g1236 Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.8883 Ocr_module_version 0.0.13 Ocr_parameters -l deu+fra+eng Old_pallet IA-NS-2000370 Openlibrary_edition Some people say this is just a bunch of small photos of album sleeves slapped together with minimal thought and little point except to encourage the drools of the nostalgically excitable. This is a collection of album covers, well-known and less-known. They are roughly grouped by the decade (1960s, 1970s, and 1980s-early1990s: all getting a short introduction), some appearing in other decade than their own. Each cover is accompanied by artist name, title, record label, your (or rough guess - I do wish there had been some more insisted searching), then design/collage/art/photo by, if known (but put sometimes just as 'unknown'). Sometimes there's a further comment added (these and the introduction are also in German and French).

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) Okay, so it was a little graphic and provocative, but as the single most controversial thing The Beatles ever did (and the most expensive for an original), the cover of Yesterday and Today surely earns a place on a list of the greatest album covers. 66: Alice Cooper: School’s Out (design by Craig Braun) The design-centric 4AD label did some of its finest work for the Cocteau Twins album covers. This shimmering image is undeniably beautiful, yet you never know just what it means…just like their music. 81: James Brown: Hell (design by Joe Belt) George Clinton’s gonzoid take on outer-space adventure found its perfect match in the effortlessly cool spaceship-party cover for Parliament’s Mothership Connection. The fact that it looked remarkably low budget only made it funkier.

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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) Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2021-12-31 05:07:05 Bookplateleaf 0004 Boxid IA40315216 Camera Sony Alpha-A6300 (Control) Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier 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.