Top 10 Best Album Covers Part 1

What would a great album be without a killer cover? Well, I'll tell you: less likely to be noticed. Great albums are great because they often have fantastic album art that one can gaze at while listening to the record in question.

For instance, I would have never discovered King Crimson had it not been for the screaming schizoid face - which caught my attention amidst a sea of generic 60s flavored flower-power covers. This is the power of the cover, and consequently enough, call me crazy but more than often the best albums of a bands catalog happen to have the best art.

My top 10:





















10. Pink Floyd - Animals (1977): This album caught my eye immediately with it's warm and stark rendering of an urban vista. Reminiscent of late 19th Century painting, the cover is in actual fact a photograph. The pig was hoisted to the top of the factory and provided the key element of focus - as well as message. Contrasting much of Storm Thorgerson's other work, Animals has a certain shocking quality which attracts the viewer, nevertheless still managing to be sublime.





















9. Led Zeppelin III (1970): What a crazy album cover. What with it's spinning kaleidoscope insert, it's slightly punk flavored collage theme, the 4 circles-band-members back cover and the crazy spiral gatefold (with the humorous zeppelin diagram). I love it! It has the mania that perfectly reflects the album - wild, fast, frenzied, raw. I particularly love the font on "Led Zeppelin" - it has a certain originality not common to 60s/early 70s art. Actually, the feel of the whole cover is very early 90s alternative or alternatively, late 2000s indie. Crazyyyy.





















8. Led Zeppelin IV (1971): A mystical, subtle, and complex cover. Alternatively to Led Zeppelin III, the art for IV is not so much provocative or sublime (as would be when they would hire Storm Thorgerson) as it is smart and even catchy.

The front cover is nothing impressive. A framed picture depicting an old man carrying sticks in some bigone era against a decrepid wall. Clever. But ooooh, turn it over and what do you see? Well, no where can the words "Led Zeppelin" be found. The album in fact is barren of any label (except on the insert). This was done spitefully by the band to show off that they weren't just hype in lieu of the critique of III (which, I will say is a far better album. Why it was critiqued or still is to this day amazes me. People need to listen, not just seek out the most obvious "songs". Etc. )

Anywhoo, the back cover is also interesting where it is revealed if one lays the album out flat that the wall disintegrates into a background of abandoned homes amidst an urban landscape. Deep man.

The inside cover is where the action really lies. Here, sprawled vertically against the album's interior is a powerful, majestic, and eye-catching black and white sketch of a mountain set against a black sky which takes up most of the album space. The mountain ascends from a low country landscape where a church lies and quickly rises against the right side of the gatefold where it ends and a prophet stands elegantly, holding a lantern that contains a golden star of David. Towards the bottom of the rocky mountain, a hermit-man is busy climbing.

This scene is featured prominently in The Song Remains the Same film (which is a visually stunning rock film, and not simply a self indulgent zeppelin wankfest meant to impress the world as many reviewers would want you to believe).

Great album, great cover.