Album Art-The Stories Behind Music's Iconic Album Covers

Send us Fan Mail

Eddie Vedder spent a few bucks at a garage sale and came home with a battered 1920s medical book that may have ended up costing Pearl Jam $2 million. It warned that masturbation could cause epilepsy, insanity and “moral imbecility”—so naturally the band decided it would make a great album package. They borrowed its name, its illustrations, its bizarre advice and even turned the CD into a miniature book. The result was Vitalogy, one of the strangest and most expensive packaging decisions of the CD era. Grab a copy and listen along with us.

Questions, comments, recommendations? We'd love to hear from you at [email protected] or check our Spotify Song List with a song from each album we’ve covered:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2NrDU39yE9CJcHU6YJT8jj?

Send us Fan Mail

What do you get when an album called Trout Mask Replica needs a cover and the art director goes to a fish market and buys a carp? You hollow out the head, convince Captain Beefheart to hold the stinking thing over his face for a couple of hours, add an enormous black hat and a blazing pink-red background—and create one of the strangest album covers ever made. Why a carp instead of a trout? Whose idea was this anyway? And what happened as that fish got warmer? Grab a copy and listen along with us. Questions, comments, recommendations? We’d love to hear from you at [email protected] or check our Spotify Song List with a song from each album we’ve covered:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2NrDU39yE9CJcHU6YJT8jj?si=Y1JAE4LWTDmKEDE9QGlB2A&pi=ly2xwE-ERRu-2

Send us Fan Mail

 William Basinski was trying to save some old tapes. Instead, he recorded them dying. Weeks later, he watched the World Trade Center disappear from the Brooklyn skyline and filmed the last hour of daylight over Manhattan. Somehow, the dying music and those haunting images found each other. Four albums. Four covers. Each one darker than the last. And an album-cover story that nobody could possibly have planned. Grab a copy and listen along with us. Questions, comments, recommendations? We’d love to hear from you at [email protected]

Send us Fan Mail

Neil Young sitting on a hay bale at Broken Arrow Ranch, wearing a hat and playing an old Martin guitar. It sounds like the perfect cover for Harvest—and it almost was. Then Neil Young and his longtime art director Gary Burden had a falling out, the photograph disappeared from consideration, and Tom Wilkes stepped in to create one of the simplest and most recognizable album covers of the 1970s. And Neil had one more idea: he wanted the cover to start decomposing as soon as you opened it. This is the story of Harvest—the cover we know, the cover that almost was, and an album package that was supposed to rot. Grab a copy and listen along with us. Questions, comments, recommendations? We’d love to hear from you at [email protected]

Send us Fan Mail

 What are the odds? Ronnie Van Zant said he wouldn't live to see thirty. Steve Gaines got spooked and walked away from the album cover photo shoot after only a handful of pictures. The album was called Street Survivors. The band stood surrounded by flames. Three days later, their plane crashed. But here's the part almost everyone gets wrong: there wasn't a fire. Sometimes what looks dangerous isn't... and what is dangerous, nobody sees coming. Grab a copy and listen along with us. Questions, comments, recommendations? We'd love to hear from us at [email protected]. 

Send us Fan Mail

Did a Playboy Playmate get murdered during the recording of an Ohio Players album? Millions of people believed she did—and swore they could hear her dying scream buried in "Love Rollercoaster." The truth is almost as fascinating as the rumor. We'll separate fact from fiction, introduce you to the real model behind Honey, and explain how one album cover became one of rock's most enduring urban legends. Grab a copy and listen along with us. Questions, comments, recommendations? We'd love to hear from you at [email protected]. 

Send us Fan Mail

David Bowie didn't just invent Ziggy Stardust—he invented an entire rock-and-roll mythology. But did you know Ziggy got his first name from a tailor's shop Bowie passed on the train? Or that the "Spiders from Mars" were inspired by real ballooning spiders that people once mistook for UFOs? Why did Bowie pose alone under the mysterious K. WEST sign, and how did an ordinary furrier become one of the most famous landmarks in rock history? We untangle the myths, the symbolism, the happy accidents, and the remarkable stories behind one of the greatest album covers ever made. Grab a copy and listen along with us. Questions, comments, recommendations? We'd love to hear from you at [email protected], or check out our Spotify playlist featuring a song from every album we've covered. 

Send us Fan Mail

 They cut two corners off a perfectly good album cover—and accidentally created one of the most ingenious packages in rock history. A failed movie in Morocco, a mysterious phrase scribbled in a notebook, psychedelic architecture, optical illusions, and a room that seems to open up as you unfold the jacket all came together to create The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys. Was it the first truly three-dimensional album cover? Maybe. Was it designed with altered minds in mind? You can decide. Grab a copy and listen along with us. Questions, comments, recommendations? We'd love to hear from you at [email protected] or check out our Spotify playlist featuring a song from every album we've covered. 

Send us Fan Mail

One college freshman passed on an $18 Woodstock ticket because he thought he'd be watching people make belts and apple butter. Another couple decided to go at the last minute, wrapped themselves in a discarded blanket, and accidentally became the face of an entire generation. They had no idea they had just become one of the most recognizable album covers in rock history—or that they'd still be together more than fifty years later. The story behind the Woodstock soundtrack cover is even better than the music. Grab a copy and listen along with us. Questions, comments, recommendations? We'd love to hear from you at [email protected].

Send us Fan Mail

 Was In Search of the Lost Chord really inspired by meditation and Eastern philosophy—or by acid trips with Timothy Leary? And how did a struggling artist, running out of time and ideas, suddenly discover the album cover by seeing multiple reflections of himself in a studio window? Join us as we explore one of rock's most spiritual—and psychedelic—album covers, from OM and yantras to skulls, fetuses, and higher consciousness. Grab a copy and listen along with us. Questions, comments, recommendations? We'd love to hear from you at [email protected] or check out our Spotify Song List with a song from every album we've covered.