lil yachty slide album cover

Today (Aug. 4), Lil Yachty decided to bless the masses with a couple of songs to enjoy. The A-side is the ChildBoy and MaxFlames-produced “Slide,” which sees him on a stream of consciousness about women, guns, and drugs.

“You got a b**ch tucked and you said it was cool, I could tell it was definitely an issue, yeah, come with me swingin’ with pistols, if it’s smoke, let me know, it’s an issue, if you’re pretty, I might have to kiss you, if you’re ugly, I hit from the binnack, I’ma n** on her butt when I’m finished, let the whole world now I’m a menace, sippin’ on drank, swingin’ a rack, stealin’ a rack, pullin’ a Track’ , yeah, keep it intact, all of my n**gas know just how to act…”

Yachty’s second drop, “SOLO STEPPIN CRETE BOY,” takes a less melodic, slightly slower approach with a bass-heavy soundscape provided by Gentuar Memishi and Beats By Bangs. With that said, the subject matter remains largely the same with catchy lines detailing the QC-signed talent’s rockstar escapades. Along with the April drop “ Strike (Holster) ,” both tracks were released as a quick-strike EP — one that presumably serves as a prelude to an upcoming full-length album.

Fans are also able to check out a matching video for “Slide” that comes courtesy of Yachty ‘s go-to director: AMD Visuals. The short clip shows him enjoying a pizza alone, hanging with friends outside of his Hummer EV, and more.

Back in January, Yachty liberated his fifth studio LP, Let’s Start Here. , an experimental body of work that saw the rapper delving into alternative styles like psychedelic rock. Diana Gordon, Teezo Touchdown, Justine Skye, Fousheé, Ant Clemons, Daniel Caesar, Nick Hakim, and more made appearances on the genre-bending effort. You can press play on both “Strike” and “SOLO STEPPIN CRETE BOY” below.

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Lil Yachty Shares New Tracks “Slide” and “Solo Steppin Crete Boy"

Ahead of the kickoff of his Field Trip Tour in September, Yachty has released new tracks and a music video.

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As promised , Lil Yachty shared two new songs on Friday.

“Slide”—which got the visual treatment, above—and “Solo Steppin Crete Boy” arrive in the wake of Yachty’s acclaimed album Let’s Start Here and the standalone follow-up “ Strike (Holster) .” The first song has production credits by GENT! and Bangs, while the second was produced by Childboy and Max Flames.

Hear "Slide" and "Solo Steppin Crete Boy," handily bundled with "Strike (Holster)," below.

Last week, Yachty made an appearance on Bobbi Althoff’s The Really Good Podcast , resulting in a discussion that was fittingly interrupted by previous podcast guest Drake . During the characteristically humorous one-on-one, Yachty said he considers the “ Summer Games ” sequel-denier to be one of his “top three” friends.

While Yachty joked during the interview that Drake has “fucking 50 times more money than me,” he also described the depth of their conversations as being akin to the "center of the Earth.”

Later this year, Yachty is taking Let's Start Here on the road with his recently announced Field Trip Tour . The global trek begins in Washington, D.C. in September before bringing the experience to fans in New York, Philadelphia, Nashville, and more. Just last week, Yachty confirmed the addition of several new dates, including a show in Atlanta that will wrap up the tour's North American leg.

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Lil Yachty Blesses Fans With Three-Track "Slide" EP

Lil Yachty has been having a massive 2023. Overall, it started with a bang thanks to his album Let's Start Here . This album was a huge deviation from what he has done in the past. Instead of the bubblegum trap he burst onto the scene with, Yachty gave us a psychedelic rock album that was hard to ignore. There were some truly terrific songs on this project, and it continues to be lauded for its boldness. Sure, it may not have the prestige of a Tame Impala album but who cares? Yachty took a risk, and it paid off.

Moreover, singles like "Strike (Holster)" and "Poland" have been massive. Yachty has been playing with a wavy vocal aesthetic that sounds amazing. At this point, you cannot deny the fact that he has been killing it. It's been awesome to witness, and this Friday, he decided to come back for more. The artist dropped off two new tracks called "Slide" and "SOLO STEPPIN CRETE BOY." As it turns out, these two tracks have been put on a 3-track EP called Slide . The third track is the aforementioned effort "Strike (Holster)."

Read More: Elliott Wilson Says Lil Yachty Forgave Him For Interview Comments, But Drake Hasn’t

Lil Yachty Is Back

When it comes to the songs here, they all offer a similar vibe. Lil Yachty is rapping a bit more on these tracks, although the melodies are still all intact. Moreover, the production possesses a hypnotic quality that a lot of people are going to enjoy. This is yet another nice release from Yachty that will tide his fans over until the next project. Based on his recent output, there is no doubt that a new Yachty album is being heavily anticipated.

Be sure to let us know your thoughts on this latest effort from Yachty, in the comments section down below. Additionally, stay tuned to HNHH for all of the latest news and updates from around the music world. We will continue to bring you the biggest releases from the biggest artists. 2023 has plenty of great new albums to come.

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Read More: Lil Yachty Clowns Drake For Instagram Caption

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Lil Yachty Drops Two New Tracks, As Part of 'Slide' Three-Pack

“slide” and “solo steppin crete boy”..

Lil Yachty continues to deliver this year, seeing the widespread success of psychedelic-rock album Let’s Start Here followed by the release of standout single “Strike (Holster).” On Boat’s latest offering, a fresh yet cohesive Slide three-pack, the rapper presents two new singles – “Slide” and “SOLO STEPPIN CRETE BOY” – alongside “Strike (Holster)”.

On the project’s first cut “Slide”, Yachty shows off his artistic versatility. He amalgamates his masterful mumble rap in the first verse with his wavy auto-tuned vocals on the hook and chorus. “Slidin’ in that Roadster (Slide), slidin’ in that ‘Cat (Slide) / Slidin’ with that nine (Slide), slidin’ with that TEC (Slide) / Slidin’ with that h*e (Phew), slidin’ with that b*tch (Slide) / Slidin’ with my dawg (Uh), slidin’ with my stick (Slide).”

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Lil Yachty Reveals AI-Generated Album Cover for ‘Let’s Start Here,’ Depicting Demented Boardroom of Executives

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Lil Yachty has revealed the artwork and release date for his forthcoming album, “Let’s Start Here,” set to debut Jan. 27 on Quality Control Music and Motown Records.

Ever the provocateur, the rapper’s new cover art previews an AI-generated image of what seems to be seven executives sitting next to each other in suits. With malformed faces akin to a psychedelic trip down the rabbit hole, the artwork seems unremarkable upon first glance. However, the longer you stare at their faces, they look inhuman, with contorted facial features and warped smiles.

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In an interview with Icebox last year , the “ Minnesota ” rapper has expressed that his “new album is a non-rap album,” hence the second chapter that he alludes to in his Instagram post. Yachty explains: “It’s alternative, it’s sick!” After recently collaborating with artists such as Tame Impala, he’s been in the process of creating a “psychedelic alternative project… [with] all live instrumentation.”

Slowly shedding major label support, Yachty now has his own label and creative consultant company, Concrete Records and Concrete Family, respectively. Working closely with Concrete Family, Yachty teamed up with the General Mills cereal brand in 2020 for a limited collaboration with Reese’s Puffs and has an undisclosed sneaker set to be released at a later date. Similar to his 2021 mixtape, “Michigan Boat Boy,” which featured almost solely Detroit artists including Rio Da Yung OG and Babyface Ray, Yachty plans to also release a mixtape with the Concrete Boys collective sometime this year.

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Lil Yachty shares cover art and release date for new album Let’s Start Here

The record arrives january 27 via quality control and motown records..

Lil Yachty has announced the title, release date, and cover art for his next album. Let’s Start Here , a psychedelic non-rap project from the multi-talented emcee, is due out January 27 via Quality Control and Motown Records.

The forthcoming project, billed as a fresh beginning for Yachty, took a hit when it was leaked in its entirety on Christmas Day. The leak led to speculation that the record’s release might be delayed or cancelled entirely, but it seems Yachty and his team are soldiering on as scheduled. Following the viral success of his catchy 2022 single “ Poland ,” the unfortunate event proved to be only a momentary setback.

Read Next: Lil Yachty flirts with harsh noise on “Something Ether”

Check out the newly revealed cover art for Let’s Start Here below.

Let’s Start Here cover art

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Lil’ Yachty Shares Cover For ‘Let’s Start Here’ Album

• January 19, 2023
• Ryan Shepard

After contributing to 21 Savage and Drake’s  Her Loss , Lil’ Yachty is ready to return with a new body of work. On Tuesday, he shared the artwork for his forthcoming project,  Let’s Start Here . Set for release on January 27, the Georgia native’s newest LP is covered by a piece of AI-generated artwork that appears to show a set of record executive frighteningly laughing as they present a contract for someone to sign.

“Thank you for your patience,” Lil’ Yachty captioned the post in which he shared his artwork.

Lil’ Yachty released his fourth studio album,  Lil’ Boat III , at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The project was led by the release of “Split/Whole Time” and “Oprah’s Bank Account” featuring DaBaby and Drake. It also included outstanding contributions from Tierra Whack, A$AP Rocky and Tyler, The Creator. This time around, it appears that he may take his focus in a new direction. In an interview last year, he said his next release would be a “non-rap album.” Instead, he said it would be a “psychedelic alternative project… [with] all live instrumentation.”

“It’s alternative, it’s sick,” he said .

Until the full project arrives on January 27, 2023, check out the artwork below.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by C.V T (@lilyachty)

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Lil Yachty: Photos From the Billboard Cover Shoot

Yachty's new album 'Let's Start Now' is a major pivot for the rapper-singer.

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Someone has sparked a blunt in the planetarium.

It may be a school night, but no one has come to the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, N.J., to learn. Instead, the hundreds of fans packed into the domed theater on Jan. 26 have come to hear Lil Yachty’s latest album as he intended: straight through — and with an open mind. Or, as Yachty says with a mischievous smile: “I hope y’all took some sh-t.”

For the next 57 minutes and 16 seconds, graphics of exploding spaceships, green giraffes and a quiet road through Joshua Tree National Park accompany Yachty’s sonically divergent — and at this point, unreleased — fifth album , Let’s Start Here. For a psychedelic rock project that plays like one long song, the visual aids not only help attendees embrace the bizarre, but also function as a road map for Yachty’s far-out trip, signaling that there is, in fact, a tracklist.

It’s a night the artist has arguably been waiting for his whole career — to finally release an album he feels proud of. An album that was, he says, made “from scratch” with all live instrumentation. An album that opens with a nearly seven-minute opus, “the BLACK seminole.,” that he claims he had to fight most of his collaborative team to keep as one, not two songs. An album that, unlike his others, has few features and is instead rich with co-writers like Mac DeMarco, Nick Hakim, Alex G and members of MGMT, Unknown Mortal Orchestra and Chairlift. An album he believes will finally earn him the respect and recognition he has always sought.

“I did what I really wanted to do, which was create a body of work that reflected me,” says a soft-spoken Yachty the day before his listening event. “My idea was for this album to be a journey: Press play and fall into a void.”

Sitting in a Brooklyn studio in East Williamsburg not far from where he made most of Let’s Start Here in neighboring Greenpoint, it’s clear he has been waiting to talk about this project in depth for some time. Yachty is an open book, willing to answer anything — and share any opinion. (Especially on the slice of pizza he has been brought, which he declares “tastes like ass.”) Perhaps his most controversial take at the moment? “F-ck any of the albums I dropped before this one.”

Read Lil Yachty’s full Billboard cover story here . Lil Yachty, presented by Doritos, will perform at Billboard Presents The Stage at SXSW on March 16 .

Penske Media Corp. is the largest shareholder of SXSW; its brands are official media partners of SXSW.

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Lil Yachty Drops New Single, Visuals For “Let’s Get On Dey Ass”

Lil Yachty  has officially released his latest song  “Let’s Get On Dey Ass”  along with an accompanying music video. The new track highlights Yachty back in his rap bag at full force, weaving his melodic and whirly auto-tuned vocals over the track’s distorted 808s, howling synth lead, and bouncy hi-hats to deliver a high octane, bass heavy, rap anthem perfect for a festival mosh pit. Directed by  Zhamak , the “Let’s Get On Dey Ass” music video shows Yachty and the Concrete Family dancing around the city, draped in luxurious matching vintage outfits and jewelry. Lofi VHS style shots of Yachty and his crew alternate with clips of the style icon shopping for another signature outfit along with a cameo from social media star and model,  Teanna Trump . The new song comes on the heels of Yachty’s collaborative album with  James Blake ,  Bad Cameo , and follows their most recent visualizer for  “Save The Savior.”

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The 100 Best Album Covers of All Time

From biggie to beyoncé to bad bunny, from nirvana to nas to neil young, this is the album art that changed the way we see music.

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY MATTHEW COOLEY

The album is the best invention of the past century, hands down — but the music isn’t the whole story. The album cover has been a cultural obsession as long as albums have. Ever since 12-inch vinyl records took off in the 1950s, packaged in cardboard sleeves, musicians have been fascinated by the art that goes on those covers, and so have fans. When the Beatles revolutionized the game with the cover of Sgt. Pepper , in 1967, it became a way to make a visual statement about where the music comes from and why it matters. But the art of the album cover just keeps evolving.

So this is our massive celebration of that art: the 100 best album covers ever, from Biggie to Beyoncé to Bad Bunny, from Nirvana to Nas to Neil Young, from SZA to Sabbath to the Sex Pistols. We’ve got rap, country, jazz, prog, metal, reggae, flamenco, funk, goth, hippie psychedelia, hardcore punk. But all these albums have a unique look to go with the sound. The most unforgettable covers become part of the music — how many Pink Floyd fans have gotten their minds blown staring at the prism on the cover of Dark Side of the Moon , after using it to roll up their smoking materials?

What makes an album cover a classic? Sometimes it’s a portrait of the artist — think of the Beatles crossing the street, or Carole King in Laurel Canyon with her cat. Others go for iconic, semi-abstract images, like Led Zeppelin, Miles Davis, or My Bloody Valentine. Some artists make a statement about where they’re from, whether it’s R.E.M. repping the South with kudzu or Ol’ Dirty Bastard flashing his food-stamps card to salute the Brooklyn Zoo.

Many of these covers come from legendary photographers, designers, and artists, like Andy Warhol, Annie Leibovitz, Storm Thorgerson, Raymond Pettibon, and Peter Saville. Some have cosmic symbolism for fans to decode; others go for star power. But they’re all classic images that have become a crucial part of music history. And they all show why there’s no end to the world’s long-running love affair with albums.

CONTRIBUTORS: David Browne , Jon Dolan , Suzy Exposito , Andy Greene , Kory Grow , Maya Georgi , Maura Johnston , Gabrielle Macafee , Angie Martoccio , Mosi Reeves , Rob Sheffield , Hank Shteamer , Simon Vozick-Levinson , Alison Weinflash , Christopher Weingarten

From Rolling Stone US

Spinal Tap, ‘Smell the Glove’

There was no easy way to discuss “the issue with the cover” of (totally fictitious heavy-metal band) Spinal Tap’s (nonexistent) 1982 album, Smell the Glove, as recounted in a scene from the mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap: “You put a greased, naked woman on all fours, with a dog collar around her neck and a leash, and a man’s arm extended out up to here holding onto the leash, and pushing a black glove in her face to sniff it,” artist-relations rep Bobbi Flekman (Fran Drescher) says. “You don’t find that offensive?” Well, somebody did, so Spinal Tap ended up with an all-black cover. The band members equivocated it by saying it looked like black leather, a black mirror, death, and mourning. Then Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest) got it: “There’s something about this that’s so black, it’s like, ‘How much more black could this be?’ And the answer is, ‘None. None more black.’” The joke manifested itself in real life with Spinal Tap’s soundtrack album, a punk band called None More Black, and “Black Albums” from Metallica, Jay-Z, Prince, the Damned, and many others. Plus, Spinal Tap eventually released their original album cover, albeit toned down a little, years later on the sleeve of their single “Bitch School.” —K.G.

Grateful Dead, ‘Europe 72’

Together or separately, the San Francisco artists Alton Kelley and Stanley Mouse made sure that album art for the Grateful Dead was as trippy (1971’s Grateful Dead) or earthy (Workingman’s Dead) as the music inside. Their visuals for the band’s live triple album are among the simplest in Dead album history. The big, clumsy foot about to stomp on Europe is a witty metaphor for the Dead’s wild-eyed series of shows on that continent, and the “fool” smashing an ice-cream cone into his forehead on the back cover is just goofy Dead fun. (It may also be connected to a tale in drummer Bill Kreutzmann’s memoir about the band dumping some ice cream onto an annoying fan.) Even in the land of the Dead, where visual and musical indulgence could rule, Kelley and Mouse realized that sometimes, less is more. —D.B.

Lil Yachty, ‘Lil Boat’

The cover of Lil Yachty’s debut mixtape, Lil Boat, finds the rapper clad in overalls, standing in a small boat in the middle of the ocean. The collage is framed by a red border printed with the numbers 33.7750° N 84.3900° W — coordinates for the Five Points neighborhood in downtown Atlanta — marking the then-18-year-old rap vocalist as the latest manifestation of the city’s fast-moving and highly influential scene. Mihailo Andic, who designed Lil Boat using a photograph provided by Yachty’s management, drew inspiration from Tumblr. “I thought it’d be a great idea to pitch a cover to his management team: Yachty, on a boat, in the middle of nowhere,” he told Green Label in 2016. “My whole style uses retouching and superimposing photos to make them look as one.” —M.R.

Public Image Ltd, ‘Metal Box’

“We were turned on by the idea that it would be difficult to open the can and get the records out,” Public Image Ltd guitarist Keith Levene told author Simon Reynolds in Rip It Up and Start Again. The post-punk pioneers were already blowing apart rock music with their long, repetitive, often improvisatory songs, and Metal Box rethought the album format itself — three 45 rpm LPs to be treated like 12-inch disco singles, all annoyingly crammed into an unwieldy canister. “With Metal Box, the cover came first, both mentally and physically,” frontman John Lydon told Classic Rock. “We spent most of the advance on it, so making Metal Box presented us with a real challenge because we didn’t have any money left for recording sessions.” —C.W.

Phoebe Bridgers, ‘Punisher’

Phoebe Bridgers’ excellent pandemic-era album has a cover that represents everything we were feeling at the time: fear, loneliness, heartbreak, and the secret wish for extraterrestrials to scoop you up into the sky and get you the hell out of here. Bridgers and photographer Olof Grind took a 24-hour road trip through the California desert, scouting for a location. “I always love a good adventure while shooting, and driving out in a pitch-black desert at 3 a.m. on dirt roads definitely added to my excitement,” Grind said. Bridgers made the skeleton suit her signature look, wearing it on the entire Punisher album cycle and tour. And it’s still impossible not to think of Grind’s image when you listen to songs like the gorgeously devastating “Moon Song” and the strangely romantic “Garden Song.” —A.M.

Offset, ‘Set It Off’

Designed and art-directed by Amber Park, the cover image for Offset’s Set It Off shows the Atlanta rapper tumbling through the sky as the world explodes around him. The image represents modern rap’s shift toward Wagnerian-size drama, with Offset as another kind of heroic survivor, outlasting and overcoming his many controversies. He wears sequined socks and gold gloves, which nod toward his fascination with Thriller-era Michael Jackson. And the image is constructed upside down, making it appear like he’s falling into the sky, not out of it. “I wanted it to be an art piece,” he told Our Generation Music. “It’s like I’m falling down but I’m going up.” —M.R.

Slayer, ‘Reign in Blood’

Just how do you illustrate lyrics like “Raining blood from a lacerated sky/Bleeding its horror, creating my structure/Now, I shall reign in blood”? Slayer producer and label head Rick Rubin turned to political cartoonist Larry Carroll, who tapped into his inner Hieronymus Bosch to create a mixed-media representation of hell with a goatlike deity, decapitated heads, and murderous black angels. “If I remember correctly, [Slayer] didn’t like the cover I did for Reign in Blood at first,” Carroll told Revolver in 2010. “But then someone in the band showed it to their mother, and their mother thought it was disgusting, so they knew they were onto something.” Carroll subsequently created similar hellscapes for Slayer’s South of Heaven, Seasons in the Abyss, and Christ Illusion albums, producing some of the scariest covers in music. —K.G.

Slint, ‘Spiderland’

The members of Slint were just teenagers when they came together in drummer Britt Walford’s Louisville,Kentucky, basement to make the eerily expansive indie rock they’d capture on their epochal 1991 sophomore album, Spiderland. That mix of youthful exuberance and youthful aloneness comes through in the album’s black-and-white cover, which shows them smilingly treading water in a local quarry. The photo was taken by their friend Will Oldham, who’d soon be making his own name with Palace Brothers and Bonnie “Prince” Billy. “We’re just all being youthful and happy,” guitarist Dave Pajo told Rolling Stone’s Hank Shteamer years later, describing the band’s attitude at the time. “When you’re younger, everything is so life-and-death and huge.” —J.D.

Lauryn Hill, ‘The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill’

The wood carving at the center of Lauryn Hill’s only official studio album to date is both inspired by artwork for the Wailers’ 1973 album Burnin’ and by the album title itself. “She already had some great ideas that were inspired by the album title,” Columbia art director Erwin Gorostiza told Okayplayer in 2021. The two developed a plan to arrange a photo shoot at Hill’s alma mater, Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey. After photographer Eric Johnson snapped images of her, they decided to select one of them as source material for an illustration that resembles something made by a wayward, “miseducated” student on a school desk. The result vividly reflects Hill’s rustic melding of hip-hop, R&B, and reggae sounds, and her journey to find clarity in a world riven by relationships and desire. —M.R.

Big Brother and the Holding Company, ‘Cheap Thrills’

Counterculture cartoonist Robert “R.” Crumb drew the cover for the 1967 debut by Big Brother and the Holding Company, a psychedelic comic strip that tells the album’s story in each of its songs. The artist laid down the cover after watching the band from backstage at San Francisco’s Carousel Ballroom: “He really wasn’t into our music, but it didn’t matter,” drummer Dave Getz recalled. It really didn’t: Crumb still captured the wild, woolly spirit of Janis Joplin and her bandmates, even if he’d intended for what became the front cover to serve as its back sleeve. —M.J.

Ani DiFranco, ‘Up Up Up Up Up Up’

Modern folk-music icon Ani DiFranco built her enduring success on a mix of anti-capitalist commitment, aesthetic ingenuity, DIY community, and her electric charisma. You can see all of those elements in the multidimensional cover image for her 1999 album. It’s a statement of playful substance over predictable image, but even with her face pointed to the ground she still completely commands your attention. The cover photo was taken by her friend and longtime manager Scot Fisher, who helped DiFranco found the Buffalo, New York-based label Righteous Babe. “We were a mom-and-pop operation,” she recalled in a 2016 interview. “Scot was the photographer and the dude who answered the phone, and I was the graphic designer who would paint the album covers.” —J.D. 

Silkk the Shocker, ‘Charge It 2 Da Game’

The garish, maximalist, larger-than-life album covers of Pen & Pixel defined the late-Nineties CD era, when Southern rap labels like No Limit, Cash Money, and Suave House began to topple the East Coast/West Coast monopoly. Brothers Aaron and Shawn Brauch covered hundreds of album covers with their Photoshop wonderlands of luxury cars, sparkling gems, and bottles of champagne. The cover of Silkk the Shocker’s second album — jeweled lettering, gleaming pinky ring, skewed perspective, gold “Ghetto Express” card — is a classic of the form. “The longer you hold that CD cover in your hand, the more possession-oriented you become,” Shawn told Red Bull. “People would comment later, ‘Yeah, man, the album wack, but the artwork was cool.’ I was like, ‘Well, that’s my job done, right?’” —C.W.

Neil Young, ‘On the Beach’

“Album covers are very important to me,” Neil Young wrote in his 2012 memoir, Waging Heavy Peace. “They put a face on the nature of the project.” This is especially true of 1974’s On the Beach, Young’s devastating rumination on Watergate, the recent breakup of his marriage, his recent albums’ commercial failure, and the overall dissolution of the Sixties dream. It’s all evident on the cover, where he’s seen standing on the Santa Monica shore, his back turned away from the camera. The tail light of a 1959 Cadillac emerges from the sand, surrounded by gaudy yellow patio furniture. The headline from a local L.A. paper reads “Sen. Buckley Calls for Nixon to Resign.” Young spontaneously purchased the items with art director Gary Burden while stoned on “dynamite” weed. —A.M.

Devo, ‘Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!’

“What we focused on was inane, mundane, dumb, mass stuff,” said Devo’s Gerald Casale to NBC. “We liked to go to Kmart and Gold Circle because it had all this discount stuff. That’s when I found, in an aisle of discontinued sports goods, the Chi Chi Rodriguez golf-ball package.” For its debut, the band wanted to use the image of the flamboyant golfer they found on a $1.99 box of balls; however, Warner Bros. lawyers intervened. They quickly found a composite photo of four U.S. presidents that Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh called “perfectly hideous” and had it airbrushed onto Rodriguez’s face. —C.W.

Frank Ocean, ‘Blonde’

The now-iconic photograph of Frank Ocean in the shower as he cups his hand over his face, his hair dyed in lime green, was the result of a lengthy 2015 collaboration between him and German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans. The image plays to both men’s interest in otherness, not only as a sign of queer identity, but also as a method of presenting a distinctly iconoclastic yet public self. Ocean and Tillmans were brought together for a photo shoot by the fashion magazine Fantastic Man. Blonde introduced Tillmans, who had been documenting underground culture since the Eighties, to a new generation. It also introduced a defining image of the singer, one both invitingly mysterious and alluringly unknowable. —M.R.

Minor Threat, ‘Minor Threat’

Minor Threat epitomized American hardcore punk at its most fiercely independent. You see that spirit in the classic image of singer Ian MacKaye’s brother Alec sleeping on the steps of Dischord House, where so many of the D.C. punk kids lived and where the band ran their label. Alec’s shaved head, his scuffed work boots, his rumpled clothes, his folded arms, his punked-out exhaustion — it summed up the whole ethos of Minor Threat. The image has been a symbol of DIY realness ever since, inspiring many tributes, most famously the cover of Rancid’s 1995 …And Out Come the Wolves. No wonder corporate America wanted a piece — Nike tried to appropriate it for their bizarre 2005 “Major Threat” ad campaign, until public outrage shut it down. —R.S.

Jay-Z, ‘The Blueprint’

For The Blueprint, Jay-Z turned to Jonathan Mannion, a photographer who had shot all of Jay’s covers since his 1996 debut, Reasonable Doubt. Mannion took inspiration from Jocelyn Bain Hogg, a British photographer who snapped South London gangster Dave Courtney giving a lecture at Oxford Union, for his book The Firm. Mannion’s shot replicates the aerial framing, finding Jay-Z looking away from the camera, holding court over a group of minions only identified by their shoes. Designer Jason Noto of Def Jam’s in-house creative department the Drawing Board cast the entire image in faded blues and grays. In 2021, Jay sued Mannion over prints the photographer sold from their many sessions. The two settled out of court in 2023. —M.R.

Taylor Swift, ‘Folklore’

Taylor Swift stepped back from her songs on her eighth album: “I found myself not only writing my own stories, but also writing about or from the perspective of people I’ve never met, people I’ve known, or those I wish I hadn’t,” she posted upon Folklore’s release in 2020. Its striking monochromatic cover — a departure from the candy-coated Lover front, and the first collaboration between Swift and photographer Beth Garrabrant — is similarly situated in the wide world, with the coat-clad singer seeming tiny amid mist-cloaked trees and mossy terrain, gazing upward with a pondering expression. —M.J.   

Shakira, ‘Dónde Están los Ladrones?’

After wrapping up her 1997 Pies Descalzos Tour, Shakira landed in Bogotá, Columbia, to discover her briefcase had been stolen … and in it, the songs she’d written for her next album. She’d decidedly named her 1998 record “Dónde Están los Ladrones?” or “Where Are the Thieves?” — and conceptualized the theft as an allegory for thefts of all kinds, including that of Columbia by corrupt politicians, drug lords, and paramilitaries, during what’s since been described as the “Dirty Wars.” Shot against a statement hot pink, Shakira posed for her album cover donning edgy purple braids, with extended dirt-covered palms. “The dirty hands represent the shared guilt,” she said of her cover. “No one is completely clean.… In the end, we are all accomplices.” —S.E.

King Crimson, ‘In the Court of the Crimson King’

King Crimson knew they were onto something big when they pieced together “21st Century Schizoid Man,” the snarling, sweeping portrait of an unraveling collective consciousness that would open their 1969 debut LP. And when artist Barry Godber dropped by London’s Wessex Studios to show them the cover painting that lyricist Peter Sinfield had commissioned, they knew they’d found the perfect visual counterpart. “This fucking face screamed up from the floor, and what it said to us was ‘schizoid man’ — the very track we’d been working on,” bassist-vocalist Greg Lake later recalled. Pairing the image with lyrics like “Blood rack, barbed wire/Politicians’ funeral pyre/Innocents raped with napalm fire,” it’s hardly a leap to imagine the cover figure looking on in horror at the atrocities the song describes. —H.S.

Weyes Blood, ‘Titanic Rising’

On the cover of Titanic Rising, Natalie Mering — the California singer-songwriter who records as Weyes Blood — appears inside an eerie deep-sea installation, hovering between a brass bed and a white wicker desk, with posters adorning the walls. The image perfectly captures the themes of Titanic Rising: millennial doom, the climate crisis, the isolation of technology, and water itself. “This bullshit initiation into culture — for most young people in the Westernized world, it’s their bedroom,” she told Rolling Stone. “They hang up posters of their favorite celebrities and their favorite movies, and they formulate these ideas about life and what life should be like, and what they want. And it’s all an incubation of capitalist bullshit. But it’s still very sacred.” —A.M.

Lil Wayne, ‘Tha Carter III’

“I’m going to be so honest with you: I don’t know Tha Carter III, Tha Carter II, Tha Carter One from Tha Carter IV. And that’s just my God’s honest truth,” Lil Wayne told RS last year. “I believe that [God] blessed me with this amazing mind, but would not give [me] an amazing memory to remember this amazing shit.” Fair enough. But the cover of Tha Carter III, Wayne’s best album, is unforgettable. Rappers have made iconic album artwork using baby photos before — think Ready to Die, Illmatic — but Wayne took it a step further, giving Baby Weezy a diamond pinky ring and some facial ink, for an image that summed up the unstoppable, no-fucks-given charm that made him a superstar. “We wanted to bring something new to it,” art director Scott Sandler said. “What if we put the tats on the baby?” —A.M.

New York Dolls, ‘New York Dolls’

Rolling Stone’s review of the New York Dolls’ 1973 self-titled debut refers to the punk pioneers as “mutant children of the hydrogen age.” This comes across perfectly on the album cover, which shows the androgynous quartet slumped together on a couch, slathered in makeup and hairspray. It was created by Vogue photographer Toshi Matsuo after the Dolls nixed a plan by their label to shoot them near vintage dolls in an antique shop, sans makeup. “That couch we were sitting on, we found that on the street and brought it up,” said guitarist Sylvain Sylvain. “We put the white fabric on it — I remember tacking it on.” The look was so ahead of its time that imitators wouldn’t come along until hair metal arrived a decade later. —A.G.

The Smiths, ‘The Queen Is Dead’

Throughout the Smiths’ feverishly productive run in the mid-Eighties, lead singer Morrissey selected photo stills depicting midcentury movies and pop-culture moments for their singles and albums. His pick for the Smith’s third album, The Queen Is Dead, may be their most iconic: an image of French superstar Alain Delon in the film L’Insoumis, lying in distress. The concept of this beautifully handsome yet controversially macho star — the Brad Pitt of the Sixties — as a “queen” nods toward Morrissey’s subversive sense of humor. The layout, handled by Rough Trade’s Caryn Gough, casts the photo in shades of dark green, making Delon appear as a doomed royal in their death throes. —M.R.

Tyler, the Creator, ‘Igor’

The cover for Tyler, the Creator’s fifth solo album is striking in its minimalism: a pained close-up of the California-born polymath combined with a typewriter-font assertion that he was responsible for all the album’s sonics, and a salmon backdrop that feels aggressive despite its pastel hue. Igor further established Tyler as an artist willing to push himself into new realms, and the cover announces that to anyone flipping through a collection. “We work well together because I believe in what he wants to create,” photographer Luis “Pancho” Perez, who worked with Tyler to create the cover, told Complex in 2019. “Nothing has really changed his confidence in himself.” —M.J.

Radiohead, ‘Kid A’

At the close of the 20th century, Radiohead were an acclaimed British rock band desperate to be anything else. That jittery unease fueled the artwork that Thom Yorke created with his old friend Stanley Donwood, riffing on ancient mythology and paranoid dreams in late-night sessions. “There was an air of chaos suddenly, and that was really fun,” Yorke told Rolling Stone years later. The cover they chose for Kid A has all the unsettling intensity of the music Yorke was making with his bandmates: an icy, forbidding mountain range, like something out of a digital nightmare. “It was almost a dark fairyland,” Donwood said. “A very lonely, cold, and quiet place, apart from the punctuations of terrible war.” —S.V.L.

Blur, ‘Parklife’

Designers Rob O’Connor and Chris Thompson took to London’s streets for inspiration as they were brainstorming a cover for what would go on to be Blur’s era-defining 1994 album. While peering in the window of a betting lounge for sports-related ideas, they found a concept that had bite: “We centered in on the greyhounds,” Blur guitarist Graham Coxon told Brit-pop chronicler Dylan Jones in 2022’s Faster Than a Cannonball, “because they had an aggressiveness we liked. We chose the ones with the most teeth. They look deranged, just longing to kill, and there’s a bizarre look in their faces. You just don’t get that look with a footballer — well, maybe a little bit.” The image of racing dogs underscored the hunger of the best Brit-pop, and set Blur apart from their more glam-minded peers. —M.J.

Willie Nelson, ‘Red Headed Stranger’

On his legendary 1975 opus, Red Headed Stranger, Willie Nelson tells the tale of a preacher on the run after killing his own child and unfaithful wife. Nelson stepped into the role of an outlaw on the cover (designed by Monica White), which showed his unruly image framed in the style of a ‘Wanted’ poster. Red Headed Stranger was country music’s first concept album, a watershed for the outlaw-country movement that included Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson, and its cover went a long way toward creating the subgenre’s rough-hewn iconography.  —G.M.

Billie Eilish, ‘When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?’

Just like the music, the cover of Bille Eilish’s classic debut drops you right into her creepy-crawly teenage nightmares. Photographer Kenneth Cappello collaborated with Eilish on a 12-hour shoot, ending up with a deeply unsettling shot of Eilish sitting on bed, her eyes entirely white, pupils obscured. Eilish brought in sketches of her inspirations for the cover, which included the Babadook. (“I got so much inspiration from The Babadook,” she told Rolling Stone in 2019.) “She’s all in,” Cappello told MTV News. “Those wide eyes? Those aren’t in post, those are contacts. She goes all in on everything.”

FKA Twigs, ‘LP1’

The hauntingly plastic visage of British musician FKA Twigs dominates the cover of LP1, a bizarre representation of her disturbingly mutant electronic pop. It was constructed by Jesse Kanda, who met her via his longtime friend and collaborator Arca. “We did the front cover for her album in my room, with my shitty lights, and no people running around. I have the most control when I do everything myself,” he told Dazed in 2014. He sculpted a photograph of her using 3D technology, manipulating and warping the image, then painted over the results. Longtime XL Recordings art director Phil Lee and Twigs collaborated on the aquamarine blue design that spotlighted Kanda’s imagery. In 2015, the cover earned a Grammy nomination for Best Recording Package. —M.R.

Grace Jones, ‘Nightclubbing’

The famous Nightclubbing photo of Grace Jones dressed in an Armani suit, a cigarette dangling from her lips, was the culmination of a tempestuous personal and professional relationship between her and photographer Jean-Paul Goude. The image seemed as much a cheeky New Wave commentary on corporate Eighties style as an exercise in gender-bending fashion. But despite observers’ claims (and criticism) of how Goude crafted and manipulated her image, Jones has always asserted that she was in control of the process. “Jean-Paul would say, later…that he had created me,” she wrote in her 2015 autobiography, I’ll Never Write My Memoirs. “I knew that wasn’t the case, that I was creating myself before I met him.”–M.R.

R.E.M., ‘Murmur’

Lots of Southern bands had used pastoral imagery on their album covers to underscore their music’s down-home difference. R.E.M. flipped the script with the cover of their debut, Murmur. The front image shows a goth-y woods overrun by kudzu — a weed that grows so fast it covers and kills any plant in its way. The back image is of a disused train trestle near the band’s hometown of Athens, Georgia. Taken together, it was a perfect reflection of the band’s mysterious, enveloping sound. The “Murmur Trestle” immediately became part of local lore, defended by R.E.M. fans when it was approved for demolition in 2019. “Why do they need to preserve it?” said photographer Sandra-Lee Phipps, who took both photos. “It was just done randomly. Somehow it ended up mattering to people.” —J.D.

Van Halen, ‘1984’

When Warner Bros. designer Margo Nahas heard Van Halen’s original concept for the cover of their sixth LP — four dancing women made out of chrome — she quickly passed. (Already a seasoned illustrator of chrome, she “couldn’t imagine doing all the reflections,” she later said.) But when her husband, fellow designer Jay Vigon, brought her portfolio to the band, they were instantly drawn to her now-iconic painting of an angelic baby grinning and holding a smoke, which she’d modeled off a friend’s son. “I took a picture of him, took him candy cigarettes, which he proceeded to eat, every single one, after a brief tantrum, of course,” Nahas recalled in 2020. The impish yet innocent image encapsulated the lovable mischief of the band’s “Hot for Teacher” era. —H.S.

Lorde, ‘Melodrama’

For her highly-anticipated sophomore album, Lorde crafted a delicate cover that evoked Melodrama’s emotional heft. Painted by the Brooklyn artist Sam McKinnis — whom Lorde connected with via a fangirling email — and inspired by an image that McKinnis had made riffing on the cover of Prince’s Purple Rain, the cover is based on a photograph McKinnis took of Lorde as she lay in bed. Drenched in the shadows of a moody, electric blue that could swatch a dance floor or the walls of a club bathroom, with warm cracks of daybreak creeping on Lorde’s cheek, the image depicts her in the morning after a night of dancing with “all the heartache and treason” she sang about on the album. —M.G.

Marvin Gaye, ‘Here, My Dear’

There are breakup albums, and then there’s Here, My Dear, Marvin Gaye’s brutally honest unpacking of his in-progress divorce from his first wife, Anna Gordy. The serene front cover shows Gaye depicted as a Roman statue, standing in front of a lavish temple — its cornerstone bearing the inscription “Love and Marriage” — next to a sculpture of embracing lovers. But by the time you see the back-cover image, the sculpture and the temple have caught fire and are actively crumbling, and the inscription on the building now reads “Pain and Divorce.” If all that weren’t bleak enough, on the inner sleeve, we see a couple’s hands engaged in a Monopoly-like board game, with all their earthly possessions at stake between them, and the scales of justice looming ominously in the background. —H.S.

DJ Shadow, ‘Endtroducing’

DJ Shadow’s 1996 debut LP was constructed almost entirely out of samples, a love letter to funky, crackly old vinyl that was released into a world where most record stores only sold CDs. The cover image shows two of Shadow’s buddies from the Bay Area hip-hop label SoulSides, producer Chief Xcel and rapper Lyrics Born, going through the stacks at Records, a local institution (now closed) that billed itself as “a speciality shop dealing in out-of-print phonograph records.” As Shadow said of the store in the documentary Scratch, “Just being in here is a humbling experience because you’re looking through all these records, and it’s sort of like a big pile of broken dreams, in a way.” —J.D.

Sonny Rollins, ‘Way Out West’

“I was really living out my Lone Ranger thing,” Sonny Rollins said in 2009, reflecting on his Western-themed classic Way Out West. He wanted a cover that evoked the Westerns he grew up on, so photographer William Claxton suggested they pick up a ten-gallon hat, a holster, and a steer’s skull and head to the Mojave Desert, where he shot Rollins holding his saxophone and staring down the camera like a hardened cowboy. Some were critical of what they saw as the photo’s hokey premise and incorrectly assumed that Rollins was pressured into it. “Many people thought wrongly over the years that I was asked to pose that way or that the material was forced on me, because California was thought to be a movie place and a commercial place,” he said. “Not true. I was given complete control.” —H.S.

Janet Jackson, ‘The Velvet Rope’

With its themes of self-care, depression, and the then-taboo exploration of Black female queerness, The Velvet Rope may be Janet Jackson’s most intimate full-length work. Ironically, its cover depicts her clothed, not topless as on the Patrick Demarchelier-photographed shot on her previous album, 1993’s Janet. Photographer Ellen von Unwerth captured Jackson dressed in a black turtleneck with her head pointed downward. Meanwhile, the deep-red background tipped her audience to the burning emotions inside Jackson, as if she’s struggling to get it all out. (The interior photographs, shot by von Unwerth and Mario Testino, are more risqué.) “You know people they still ask me about it,” said von Unwerth of the enigmatic cover. “It became more iconic in a way.” —M.R.

My Bloody Valentine, ‘Loveless’

Swoosh-y abstraction was a go-to look for turn-of-the-Nineties shoegaze bands like Ride, Slowdive, and Swervedriver. But those bands usually worked in moody blues and grays. My Bloody Valentine’s choice of hot pink (a color you were more likely to see on a Poison record) for the cover of their 1990 masterpiece Loveless grabbed your eye with a look as undeniably loud as the band’s stomach-rattling guitar swells. MBV mastermind Kevin Shields and visual artist Angus Cameron collaborated on the image, taking a screengrab of Shields’ hands on his guitar from the band’s Cameron-directed “Too Shallow” video and turning it into a blur of radiant abstraction. —J.D.

Beastie Boys, ‘Licensed to Ill’

The cover of the Beastie Boys’ debut is as brash and playfully referential as the Beasties’ sound. Producer Rick Rubin got the idea for the cover — a Boeing 727 with a Beastie Boys logo and a tail number that, viewed in the mirror, says “eat me” — while reading through the Led Zeppelin bio Hammer of the Gods and spying a photo of the band’s private jet. “I wanted to embrace and somehow distinguish,” he said in the book 100 Best Album Covers, “in a sarcastic way, the larger than life rock & roll lifestyle.” Artists Stephen Byram and World B. Omes crafted the gatefold cover with a surprise in mind — at first it looks almost majestic, but when seen in full, the plane is revealed to have crashed, its front end crumpled. The resulting image provides another layer of irony: The plane, many have noted, looks like a joint smashed in an ashtray.

Joni Mitchell, ‘Hejira’

Joni Mitchell wrote Hejira while traveling cross-country, so she could have slapped a photo of an open road on the cover and called it a day. Instead, it was only the beginning. The sleek road sits inside a black-and-white Norman Seeff portrait of Mitchell, “haunted, like a Bergman figure,” wearing a beret and holding a cigarette. Around 14 photos were used for the cover and sleeves — including figure skater Toller Cranston out on the ice, to complete the wintry vibe — and an airbrush was used to make the images on the cover look like one cohesive illustration. The effort paid off, creating a beautifully intricate album cover to represent delicate tracks like “Amelia” and “Song for Sharon.” Looking back, Mitchell said it’s her favorite cover of hers: “A lot of work went into that.” —A.M.

Sonic Youth, ‘Goo’

Sonic Youth’s long run as the official band of America’s avant-garde art scene means that their catalog is full of iconic images, like Daydream Nation’s Gerhard Richter candle painting and Dirty’s Mike Kelley rag doll. But none are as enduring as the black-and-white sketch that SoCal punk legend Raymond Pettibon contributed to Goo. The pair of impossibly cool young sociopaths and their neo-noir tale of sex and death have been endlessly memed since then, but back in 1990, they made execs at the band’s new major-label home nervous — which was kind of the point. “That was so important at the time,” Lee Ranaldo later told biographer David Browne. “In a way, we were still in that world … that our ‘scene’ was making.” —S.V.L.

Rosalía, ‘El Mal Querer’

Rosalía tapped a longtime internet friend, the Spanish Croatian artist Filip Ćustić, to conceive what he’s described as a “visual universe” for her 2018 flamenco-pop masterwork, El Mal Querer. The two chatted over Whatsapp to devise an image for each track that would “update Spanish imagery to the 21st century.” In consistency with the record’s theme, Ćustić depicts Rosalía as an ethereal queen of the seraphs, a symbol of the divine feminine, liberated from the tyranny of a controlling man. “She emerges naked from the heavens, as if she were a goddess more than a virgin, saying, ‘This is me, and this has been my learning process,’” explained Ćustić in Spanish newspaper El Pais. —S.E.

Lana Del Rey, ‘Norman Fucking Rockwell’

On the cover of her sixth album, Lana Del Rey seems to be pulling us into her world of deconstructed American myths, as she clings to the Kennedy-esque figure of Jack Nicholson’s grandson Duke Nicholson. From its oil-painted blue sky to Del Rey’s bright-green nylon jacket, the image’s retro-modern feel perfectly reflects the way the music inside offers her own 2010s vision of fading Laurel Canyon glory. The cover photo was taken by Del Rey’s sister, Caroline “Chuck” Grant, who has collaborated with the singer on a number of music videos and photo shoots (including a 2023 cover of Rolling Stone UK). “She captures what I consider to be the visual equivalent of what I do sonically,” Del Rey said in a 2014 interview. —G.M.

T. Rex, ‘Electric Warrior’

Few rock sleeves feel as purposefully barren as the Electric Warrior cover, which finds glam god Marc Bolan suspended, along with his guitar and amp, in what might as well be an interstellar void. Using a live-image shot by Kieron Murphy, Hipgnosis designers Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell added a striking gold halo that helped turn Bolan into a visual icon at precisely the point when he was completing his metamorphosis from flower-child folkie to consummate rock & roll dandy. “Black and gold, the metal guru in full force,” Beck once wrote of one of his favorite album-art specimens. “This is what we want a rock cover to look like.” —H.S.

A Tribe Called Quest, ‘The Low End Theory’

The cover of A Tribe Called Quest’s second album features an unnamed model photographed by Joe Grant. She’s kneeling in black shadows, her body covered in green and red paint. It’s partly inspired by Ohio Players’ memorable 1970s run of covers that depicted women in freaky and suggestive positions. “I wanted a white background for the shot, but they flipped it and made it black,” said group leader Q-Tip in the 2005 book Rakim Told Me. All of the Low End Theory’s visual elements, from the woman in body paint to the red-black-green color scheme reminiscent of the Pan-African flag, became defining elements for Tribe moving forward, and a signature for their deep-rooted and jazz-inflected bohemian sound. —M.R.

Björk, ‘Homogenic’

The making of Homogenic was a fraught time for Björk, as she adjusted to a new level of global fame and the suicide of Ricardo López, a disturbed fan who mailed a letter bomb to her London home. After spotting a striking fashion photo created by photographer Nick Knight and designer Alexander McQueen, she enlisted them to sum up the various emotional currents in her life in an arresting hyperreal portrait. The blend of cultural elements — a Japanese kimono, a European manicure, Maasai neck rings, and a Hopi “butterfly whorl” hairstyle — reflected Björk’s perception of herself as a global citizen. As she later said: “We were trying to make this person that was under a lot of restraint, like long manicure, neckpiece, headpiece, contact lenses — still trying to keep the strength.” —H.S.

Judas Priest, ‘British Steel’

Judas Priest guitarist Glenn Tipton put in his time at the British Steel Corporation, working for the steel producer for five years before his band — who produce a different kind of heavy metal — decided to name their sixth album, British Steel. The title clicked with art director Rosław Szaybo and photographer Bob Elsdale, who created a giant razor blade out of aluminum with the band’s logo on it. Szaybo volunteered to hold it for the shot. “A lot of people looked at it and were really quite horrified,” Elsdale told Revolver. “The edges of the blade seemed to be cutting into Rosław’s flesh, because he was really gripping it quite hard. But that wasn’t the case — it actually had blunt edges. It wasn’t bloody, but it had an element of drama.” —K.G.

Sleater-Kinney, ‘The Hot Rock’

“It’s a labyrinthine record,” Carrie Brownstein wrote of Sleater-Kinney’s fourth LP, The Hot Rock, in her memoir, “sad, fractious, not a victory lap, but speaking to uncertainty.” Following up on their 1997 breakthrough, Dig Me Out, Brownstein, Corin Tucker, and Janet Weiss were working through interpersonal struggles while facing more scrutiny than ever before. The cover photo by Marina Chavez, showing the band standing on a Portland, Oregon, street corner, captures that heavy energy: Tucker and Weiss each stare toward the curb, the drummer looking almost trepidatious, while Brownstein holds up her hand, hailing a cab, her face bearing a disgruntled expression. Like the jewel thieves in the 1972 heist film that gave the album its name, the trio had no choice but to get a move on and meet their moment. —H.S.

David Bowie, ‘Diamond Dogs’

David Bowie closed out his glam era with the decadent apocalyptic excess of Diamond Dogs, a concept album set in a crumbling America of the future. “When we got to Diamond Dogs,” he later said, “that was when it was out of control.” The deranged spirit extended to its cover, designed by Belgian artist Guy Peellaert, which depicted Bowie as a grotesque half-man/half-dog, including genitals on his twisted body. Bowie’s pose on the cover was inspired by a 1926 photo of singer Josephine Baker. Just as the album was ready to get shipped to retailers, Bowie’s record label pulled the cover and had it airbrushed into something less offensive. Some copies did make it out, and Diamond Dogs remains the most provocative album cover of Bowie’s career. —G.M.

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