My favorite is from Lateralus by TOOL:

http://www.tprice.net/disco/tool/insidelateralus.jpg

Alex Grey does their artwork, and he's amazing.

am i allowed to do images?
i guess not.
well that kinda sucks for this thread.

anyway... a few off the top of my head, in no particular order because i love so many...

Blur: Parklife
They had a thing at the time for carefully using stock photography, instead of original images... which (as a pop art fan) I find really super cool. Also, their logo designer said "we wanted something that kids could draw on their schoolbag" which has become my golden rule of logo design. The album is about ...life (the dog race analogy is good!) and dog racing is a traditional british thing, another theme of the album. It's like they deliberately set up that perfect shot just for the album cover.... but actually they picked it from a catalogue. Pop art rules.

Radiohead: Amnesiac
This is just soooooooooo Radiohead, so perfect for the music, such good typography, my favourite colours, everything is cool and makes me want to play it again.

The Beatles: Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts' Club Band
You don't seriously need me to write something here do you?

FSUK #1
Awesome compilation of breakbeaty things from the nineties, "Future Sound Of The United Kingdom #1" ...very nice artwork. "messy" is a very hard style to do right. Sorry this is a bad jpg but it's hard to find.

That Herb Albert album cover is legendary. I was just over at my friend's place last night, and he has that album framed next to the Johnny Cash album Live at Folsom Prison which is also a pretty awesome cover. Not that it's overly stylized, but knowing it's a close up picture taken at the live prison concert of him sweating and most likely in mid-song makes it all the more cooler.

I really dig the Revolver album cover from The Beatles. It used to be in my father's LP collection when I was a kid, and I always thought it was trippy. And, I really love the Pink Floyd Animals album, because eventhough it appears to be a painting, it's really a photograph. From Wikipedia: "The giant, helium-filled pig seen on the cover was actually flown over Battersea Power Station for the photo shoot."

oohhhhhh... that pink floyd is aweeesssome. that is one of my favourite buildings in the world.

^The Battersea Power Station is really cool. Ian McKellan used it in the ending of his version of Richard III.

Here's a list of some of my favorites! "Ken: By Request Only"!

^
Priceless.

Spirit "Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus" Do yourself a favor and hear this album. Possibly the most overlooked album of its era.
http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000002AF2.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Mountain "Nantucket Sleighride"
http://img3.nnm.ru/imagez/gallery/9/9/c/d/7/99cd78481596a66260f12ddb1f93a268_full.jpg

Yes "Fragile"
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/48/Fragile.jpg

Jethro Tull "Heavy Horses" "Bring me a wheel of oaken wood, a rein of polished leather, a heavy horse and a tumbling sky, brewing heavy weather."
http://remus.rutgers.edu/JethroTull/Photos/heavy_horses.jpg

Iron Maiden - A Matter of Life and Death.

Rage Against The Machine - The Battle of Los Angeles

I have to check my collection at home for me, but for now I dig chicks

Meanwhile check out this great site for Album Covers. http://tralfaz-archives.com/coverart/cover_art_list.html and this one as it gives alot of background information. http://www.superseventies.com/greatestalbumcovers.html

^Ooooo! Yeah, Iron Maiden had some awesome covers! I used to have this Iron Maiden Number of the Beast album cover as a black light poster on my wall in high school. Eddie is legendary! I've got a cheese-lovin' nostalgic spot for most of the Heavy Metal covers from that time. I mean, come on, how can you not include this 80s-era nuke hysteria gem? Vic Rattlehead is also legendary.

As an aside, do you remember how many 80s heavy metal bands had mascots?! Motley Crue's Allister Fiend?! Anthrax's Not Man? A quick Google search netted this site with a list of 80s band mascots. Classic stuff.

gabriel: scratch

faith no more: songs to make love to

korn: follow the leader

iron maiden: several of them, seen here redone, using Spongebob instead of Eddie!

Is it just me, or is Joyce in the Cooper family?

>> ^blankfist:
Here's a list of some of my favorites! "Ken: By Request Only"!

sonofabitch!

2 other people mentioned iron maiden covers, while i was looking for good pics of the album covers i remember digging as a kid. hehe. knew i wouldn't be the only one.

wow blankfist - that's a trove of avatar goodness. I really think you should go with Joyce, though - Tino doesn't quite fit, so to speak.


I couldn't say it's my favorite, because I've never really thought about album covers that way, but "Bitch's Brew" is definitely on my list of eye candy.

>> ^kronosposeidon:
^The Battersea Power Station is really cool. Ian McKellan used it in the ending of his version of Richard III.

also put to surreally good use for the film Children of Men

anyone needing any inspiration:

http://www.shillpages.com/music/index.htm

Eddie is the man.

>> ^jonny:
wow blankfist - that's a trove of avatar goodness. I really think you should go with Joyce, though - Tino doesn't quite fit, so to speak.


Tino fits just fine. Just fine.

Not my favorites, but they sure are funny.

http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/7508/7beastsco2.jpg

http://www.thefunkstore.com/CurrentCDs/August2006/CD-ReddFoxxYouGottaWash.jpg

>> ^blankfist:
Here's a list of some of my favorites! "Ken: By Request Only"!

The "Joyce" album cover show in that link has also become iconic itself. At least it's iconic enough for people to parody it:

http://snobsite.com/archives/2005/11/re_joyce.php

I love the album cover to blankfist's first EP

my weird...

A few of my favorites

http://www.worldtributebands.com/cov-a.jpg
http://www.truemetal.org/metalwallpaper/images/kansaspointofknowreturn.jpg
http://www.bluesnaggletooth12.com/goodies/nursery.jpg
http://tubular.net/covers/large/TubularBells.jpg
http://mnmedia.musicnation.com/Blog/2008/080124/gabriel.jpg

Be sure to check out this post by mlx:
http://www.videosift.com/video/Battle-of-the-Album-Covers

Beatles white album, and Spinal Tap's first....

>> ^rottenseed:
I love the album cover to blankfist's first EP
my weird...


I never knew I was a Samoan.

http://sleevage.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/pantera_vulgar_display_power_front.jpg

Turns out the best album covers were by one group called Hipgnosis.
http://www.sound.jp/hipgnosis/yapwall/yhip.html

^Agreed. The Wikipedia article has a more extensive listing of all their works:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipgnosis

Too bad the group dissolved in 1983, but one of its founders, Storm Thorgerson, still does album (CD) design.

Blue Note records, too many to name, all some of the most artful and candid shots of the great jazzmen.....

oh and, you kids and yer cd inserts.....those are not album covers-Nothing beats the look, feel, and flavor of vinyl, and a 12"-plus sleeve to handle and pass on to yer rugrats......

Gotta chime in here.

Here's a cover that may be largely responsible for a 40-year career (it helps that the music was and has stayed great too):
http://tralfaz-archives.com/coverart/K/king_crimson_court.html

Roger Dean was a great match for the music of Yes--really seemed to complete them. His most elaborate work for the band:
http://tralfaz-archives.com/coverart/Y/yes.html

Led Zeppelin also produced a couple of fun covers, with cutouts and moving bits so you could customize them, kinda. Zeppelin III had cutouts with a rotating inner layer of different pictures that showed through. Physical Graffiti had a bunch of windows cut out, with different scenes for each one on the various inner sleeves of the double album. You can't get that with a CD, and the Internet images I found weren't very helpful either.

There are a couple of CDs with fun covers, though. Tool, also mentioned above, had a 3D cover for Ænima and another kind of 3D booklet and glasses for 10,000 Days; Lateralus featured a booklet printed on clear plastic, so you could peel away the image like in some anatomy books you may have seen. Also Beck's "The Information" was basically blank and came with lots of stickers so you could make your own version.

^ art attracts art attracts time and space......

I always loved the old man on the cover of Kansas Leftoverture. Some others are Supertramp's Breakfast in America, the Pulp Ficton soundtrack, and I love ALL of Boston's, Journey's and ELO album covers. Yeah, they're sorta trans am drivin rednecky.. but what can I say? I never said I was cultured