Album Art Picture of Horses and a Boy Dancing

They're images yous've seen a thousand times, merely what practise they mean, and how did they terminate upwardly on the cover of your favourite ever albums?

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We rounded up fifty of the most iconic pieces of album artwork from indie releases from Joy Division, David Bowie, Amy Winehouse, Nirvana, The Smiths, Strokes, Killers and more and dived into their back stories. Some of the tales of these covers' creation are as interesting as the albums themselves…

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The Smiths – Meat Is Murder

The Smiths – Meat Is Murder: The original photograph of this soldier, Marine Corporal Michael Wynn, was taken in 1967. He had the words "Brand state of war non love" inscribed on his helmet. It was used as the paradigm for Emile de Antonio'due south md 'In the Year of the Pig' in 1968, but The Smiths inverse the wording to "Meat is Murder" for their '85 album. Wynn is reportedly still alive and living in Commonwealth of australia.

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Amy Winehouse – Back To Blackness

Amy Winehouse – Dorsum To Black: Amy arrived four hours late to this shoot, having been partying all night at her friend's wedding. Shot in a blackness room at photographer Mischa Richter's firm in Kendal Ascent, which had blackboard pigment on the cupboards, this was the concluding shot of the 24-hour interval, with early on evening light streaming through a bay window to the right. Information technology was the last time Richter saw Amy.

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Nirvana – Nevermind

Nirvana – Nevermind: Conceived after Cobain and Grohl watched a program on water births, the iconic sleeve was somewhen shot in a public swimming pool with three-month-old infant Spencer Eldon. When concerns regarding the image showing the infant's penis were raised, Cobain suggested a sticker maxim "If you lot're offended past this, yous must exist a closet paedophile".

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Radiohead – Kid A

Radiohead – Kid A: "The overarching idea of the mountains was that they were these landscapes of power, the idea of tower blocks and pyramids," says sleeve artist Stanley Donwood. He and Yorke – under the Tchock alias he uses when making fine art – were likewise inspired past a photograph of the war in Kosovo, which ended in 1999.

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The Disharmonism – London Calling

The Clash – London Calling: Photographer Pennie Smith didn't desire this blurry live shot to be used for the cover, just Joe Strummer and the ring's graphic designer Ray Lowry overrode the decision, adding in the distinctive pinkish and light-green lettering of Elvis Presley'southward debut album. The remains of the shattered bass are now on display at Cleveland's Rock and Curlicue Hall of Fame.

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Joy Division – Unknown Pleasures

Joy Division – Unknown Pleasures: Renowned artist Peter Saville designed the sleeve, which is based on an image of radio waves taken from the Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Astronomy. The original prototype, created in 1970, was then reversed so that black was the ascendant color, leading to an instantly recognisable print that'south been replicated on merchandise ever since.

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Haven – Definitely Maybe

Oasis – Definitely Peradventure: 1 of the most iconic sleeves of them all (an verbal replica of the room was recently mocked upwards for a special exhibition), 'Definitely Maybe'southward artwork was shot in Bonehead'southward living room with numerous prominent cultural reference points – a scene from The Proficient. The Bad And The Ugly, a poster of Burt Bacharach – on display.

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Led Zeppelin – Four

Led Zeppelin – IV: As a 'fuck you' to the critics who'd put the success of their first three albums down to hype, Led Zeppelin decided to release their 4th untitled. Instead of any words, the cover features a painting vocaliser Robert Institute constitute in an antiques send in Reading. The record itself displays four symbols, or runes: i for each band member.

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Blondie – Parallel Lines

Blondie – Parallel Lines: This classic sleeve got the ring's manager, Peter Leeds, fired. Without telling the band, he chose the image, which had been rejected by Debbie Harry – "I don't call back it'south a great design, personally," she said – without informing the band, who were hoping it would testify them fading in and out of the monochrome stripes. Leeds was replaced by Shep Gordon.

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Neutral Milk Hotel – In The Plane Over The Bounding main

Neutral Milk Hotel – In The Airplane Over The Sea: Based on a vintage postcard, Mangum asked artist Chris Bilheimer to supplant the face of the adult female with a irish potato. The resulting image tiptoes a thin line betwixt cheery nostalgia and something much eerier.

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Bob Dylan – The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan – The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan: Shot in 1963, this one has Dylan and his and so-girlfriend Suze Rotolo strolling down Jonas Street, NYC. Critic Janet Maslin once wrote that the cover "inspired countless young men to hunch their shoulders, wait distant, and permit the girl exercise the clinging," simply actually Dylan was just chilly.

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The Velvet Secret – The Velvet Surreptitious

The Velvet Underground – The Velvet Underground: The forepart and back cover photos were shot by artist Billy Name, who lived in Andy Warhol's debauched NYC studio The Factory at the time of the album's release. He'south namechecked past Lou Reed in 'That'southward The Story Of My Life'.

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Sonic Youth – Fantasize Nation

Sonic Youth – Fantasize Nation: A section of the painting 'Kerze' past German artist Gerhard Richter, who was known for his photorealistic works. The original was auctioned by Sotheby's in 2008 with a guide price of £ii.5m, but information technology sold for £vii.1m.

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Jeff Buckley – Grace

Jeff Buckley – Grace: Designer duo Nicky Lindeman and Christopher Austopchuk came up with the cover concept, and much of the focus is on the vocalizer's skilful looks. Speaking to 'Interview Magazine' in 1994, Buckley rejected the affiche-boy tag: "The style you look doesn't mean shit if you can't sing, or if you're mean to people".

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Interpol – Turn On The Vivid Lights

Interpol – Turn On The Brilliant Lights: Inspired past minimal colour palettes and the Bauhaus art motion, artist Sean McCabe somewhen concluded upwards using a photograph taken inside a London cinema as the bold image on the forepart of Interpol's debut. "They knew their sound and await had a presence to it, and they wanted [the artwork] to accept a sense of awe and wonder," he says of the sleeve.

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The Killers – Hot Fuss

The Killers – Hot Fuss: Despite the band's well-documented Vegas roots, the buildings pictured on the front of their 2004 debut were actually located at a structure factory in Shanghai, People's republic of china. The Chinese characters on top of the buildings read 'construction cloth development'.

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Foo Fighters – Foo Fighters

Foo Fighters – Foo Fighters: The encompass photo of an antique Cadet Rogers XZ-38 Disintegrator Pistol was taken by Grohl'south then-wife Jennifer Youngblood. The image acquired controversy because of the mode that Kurt Cobain had died, but was just intended to tie in with the sci-fi theme of the band's name ('foo fighter' was a wwII term for a UFO).

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The Stones Roses – The Stone Roses

The Stones Roses – The Stone Roses: The encompass art is a Jackson Pollock-influenced painting by Roses guitarist John Squire (too a noted creative person), which is said to brand reference to the May 1968 riots in Paris. The lemons that are featured on the sleeve refer to the fruit that was used as an antidote to tear gas.

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Yeah Aye Yeahs – Fever To Tell

Yes Yeah Yeahs – Fever To Tell: Cody Critcheloe, frontman of electro-punks 'Ssion', created the illustrations of Karen, Nick and Brian. Karen later said she was taken by his "wacked-out artistic sensibility", proverb of the artwork: "It is my belief that Cody is a cult fable in the making. I was helpless to its electric, raspberry charm".

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Ac/DC – Back In Black

AC/DC – Back In Black: The cover of the archetype 1980 LP was a simple design of plain, stark blackness in honour of one-time Ac/DC vocalizer Bon Scott, who passed away the same year subsequently drinking himself to death.

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Kraftwerk – The Human Auto

Kraftwerk – The Man Motorcar: A striking have on Lissitzky and Rodchenko, this Constructivist prototype feels oppressive, merely non directly communist or fascist: as percussionist Karl Bartos has said, it had "a strong paramilitary paradigm, but it is a contradiction because we wore reddish shirts and non dark-brown." To brand the artwork even more than perplexing, the title appears in four different languages.

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PJ Harvey – To Bring Y'all My Love

PJ Harvey – To Bring You My Love: Her first 2 album covers had featured the wok of Polly's friend and long-term visual collaborator Maria Mochnacz. The 'To Bring My Honey' shot was taken past manner photographer Valerie Phillips on the ready of the 'Down By The Water' video, directed by Mochnacz.

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The Strokes – Is This It

The Strokes – Is This It: The shot, taken by photographer Colin Lane, is of Lane's and then-girlfriend and was taken spontaneously after she emerged naked from the shower. "Nosotros did near 10 shots. There was no real inspiration, I was just trying to take a sexy moving picture," says Lane of the image.

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Portishead – Dummy

Portishead – Dummy: A notwithstanding from the 10-infinitesimal short film 'To Kill A Dead Man', a spy film homage starring Barrow equally a rooftop assassinator and Gibbons every bit the distraught wife of the man he'southward contracted to kill.

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Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot: Surfacing and then soon after nine/11, 'Yankee Hotel Foxtrot'due south' cover image of 2 towers picked out against a blank groundwork had a particular resonance. They're really the twin Marina City towers, on the n bank of the Chicago river, and the comprehend was finalised before the catastrophic events.

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Elvis Presley – Elvis Presley

Elvis Presley – Elvis Presley: For 47 years information technology was believed that this photo – taken on July 31 1955 in Tampa, Florida – had been taken by Popsie Randolph. It was August 2002 when Elvis expert Joseph A. Tunzi discovered the shot was actually taken past William V "Red" Robertson. The embrace style has been echoed over the years by everyone from Tom Waits to Chumbawamba.

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Pixies – Doolittle

Pixies – Doolittle: 'Doolitle' was the kickoff anthology where 4AD'due south in firm designer Vaughan Oliver had access to the lyrics beforehand. Thus the monkey references in the rails 'Monkey Gone To Heaven', while the booklet also contains oblique references to the likes of 'I Bleed' and 'Gouge Abroad'. Oliver said in 2013 that information technology remains his favourite 4AD sleeve.

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Lou Reed – Rock North Roll Animal

Lou Reed – Rock N Roll Animate being: The cover shot is credited to piddling-known lensman DeWayne Dalrymple, who worked during the '60s and '70s with artists including Wilson Pickett and psych-folk band The Trout.

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Franz Ferdinand – Franz Ferdinand

Franz Ferdinand – Franz Ferdinand: In conversation for an exhibition of Domino Records' sleeve art in 2007, art director Matt Cooper recalled: "For such a uncomplicated pattern, this went through a surprising number of permutations. At 1 phase the back embrace was the forepart. The angle of tilt on the logo – 13 degrees – will be forever ingrained upon my memory!"

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David Bowie – Diamond Dogs

David Bowie – Diamond Dogs: Bowie appears as half-man, half-dog character Halloween Jack, leader of the Diamond Dogs gang. Photographer Terry O'Neill took the pictures, which were then given to Belgian artist Guy Peellaert to render as a painting. RCA execs worried about the domestic dog genitals on testify, and censored the image. "I thought information technology was very sad," Peellaert said subsequently.

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Slint – Spiderland

Slint – Spiderland: The cover shot, which depicts the band standing in an abandoned quarry, was taken by none other than Bonnie Prince Billy (aka Will Oldham). 'Spiderland', withal, is the vocalizer'southward simply notable foray into sleeve design.

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The Kinks – The Kinks Are The Village Dark-green Preservation Society

The Kinks – The Kinks Are The Village Dark-green Preservation Society: The cover shot for 'Hamlet Light-green…' took identify at Kenwood House on Hampstead Heath. Tune Maker lensman Barrie Wentzell took the pictures. 'Hamlet Green…' would exist the terminal anthology to feature the original Kinks line-upward, with bassist Pete Quaife leaving in 1969.

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Morrissey – Your Arsenal

Morrissey – Your Arsenal: Both the front and dorsum cover images are live shots taken at a 1991 gig at New York's Nassau coliseum. The lensman was visual artist and punk vocalist Linder Sterling, whom the singer has described as "steadfast and constant in [his] life" since they met in 1976.

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Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young – Deja Vu

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young – Deja Vu: Civil war buff Stephen Stills wanted the cover to look like a photo from that era (1860s). To reach that, the band rented lookalike outfits from a costume store and requested that lensman Tom O'Neal utilize an erstwhile-fashioned wooden box photographic camera for the shoot, which took place in David Crosby'due south rental house.

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The Cure – Disintegration

The Cure – Disintegration: Paul Thompson and Andy Vella had designed all of The Cure's artwork until this indicate, merely for 'Disintegration' Robert Smith was thinking of using someone new. In response, Thompson and Vella moved from their usual abstruse designs into 1 that focused on Smith'southward confront, which some saw equally a witting ploy to curry favour.

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The Prodigy – Music For The Jilted Generation

The Prodigy – Music For The Jilted Generation: There are ii pieces of art on this album – the screaming embrace, by Stuart Haygarth, and the gatefold, by horror illustrator Les Edwards. Liam Howlett institute a plaster head at Camden Market and asked Haygarth to sculpt it as if it were breaking through peel. Many interpreted it to be a visual response to the criminalisation of raves in 1994.

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Pink Floyd – The Dark Side Of The Moon

Pinkish Floyd – The Dark Side Of The Moon: Floyd's label weren't happy nearly the prism gatefold sleeve, insisting information technology was as well minimalist. '…Dark Side' ended up being their biggest-selling album all the aforementioned. Art grouping Hipgnosis, the team backside the design, take said the prism is meant to celebrate the group'due south famous light show.

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Elton John – Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

Elton John – Bye Yellow Brick Road: Illustrator Ian Beck was called for the sleeve thanks to his work on singer-songwriter Jonathan Kelly's 'Wait Till They Modify The Properties'. Elton's Rocket Tape Company were so smitten they originally wanted to apply the aforementioned movie. Elton looks so long-legged because Brook asked his taller friend Leslie McKinley Howell to pose for framing shots.

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Belle And Sebastian – If You're Feeling Sinister

Belle And Sebastian – If You're Feeling Sinister: Early on in their career Belle And Sebastian would refuse to take their picture taken, and so all their artwork was taken from archive photos and shots of friends, in homage to the classic Smiths sleeves.

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The Swell Pumpkins – Adore

The Neat Pumpkins – Adore: Corgan's then girlfriend, Ukrainian-born Yelena Yemchuk, who had been involved with the videos for the singles from 'Mellon Collie…', is credited with the art direction of 'Adore'. Compared to the whimsy of 'Mellon Collie…', the gothic darkness of the main prototype was a signpost to the bleakness within.

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The Ramones – Ramones

The Ramones – Ramones: The punk legends originally wanted a encompass like to 'Meet the Beatles!' for this self-titled album, simply later a disastrous shoot which cartoonist John Holmstrom described as like "pulling teeth", opted for stark simplicity: the band lined up confronting a brick wall, expertly captured by photographer Roberta Bayley.

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Bloc Party – Silent Alarm

Bloc Political party – Silent Alarm: The bare winter landscape was photographed past freelance Ness Sherry and expresses a desolate theme of isolation, loneliness and low. A negative version of the same photograph was used on the later release, 'Silent Alarm Remixed'.

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Kate Bush – Hounds of Love

Kate Bush – Hounds of Love: The shot of Kate reclining seductively on the embrace takes on a rather creepier tone when yous notice it was taken by her own blood brother, John Carder Bush.

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The Kinks – Kinks

The Kinks – Kinks: The encompass shot was taken past Klaus Schmalenbach, who went on to piece of work with the band on several of their subsequent releases. He later became a record executive at BMG.

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Kaiser Chiefs – Employment

Kaiser Chiefs – Employment: Designed by veteran art director Cally – whose credits include records by Nick Drake, Scott Walker, Catchy and more than – the sleeve was designed to resemble the battered box of a 1940'due south board game. A palatial edition even came with a wad of Monopoly-style money

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The Replacements – Let It Be

The Replacements – Permit It Be: The front-cover photo was taken past Dan Corrigan and features The Replacements sitting on the roof of the Stintsons' family abode. Left to right, information technology's Paul Westerberh, Bob Stintson, Chris Mars, Tommy Stintson. The picture is said to exist a homage to the Beatles' final rooftop concert during the 1969 'Let It Be' sessions.

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Elastica – Elastica

Elastica – Elastica: Renowned German fashion photographer Juergen Teller who was worked with artists including Sinead O'Connor, Bjork, Elton John, took the black-and-white snap for Elastica'south debut – a comprehend that, with its sparse, sparing style, stood apart from the elaborate and conceptual sleeves favoured past Mistiness and Suede.

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The Cure – Boys Don't Cry

The Cure – Boys Don't Cry: The sleeve for 'Three Imaginary Boys' featured a fridge, a vacuum cleaner and a lamp – the latter evidently representing Smith. The same designer, Polydor art director Pecker Smith, produced a similarly artful sleeve for 'Boys Don't Cry', albeit one that seems to interpret the track 'Fire in Cairo' quite literally.

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LCD Soundsystem – LCD Soundsystem

LCD Soundsystem – LCD Soundsystem: After years spent performing in punk bands, James Murphy's transition into an unlikely 35-year-old dancefloor king was cemented with LCD Soundsystem's 2005 debut. What better image to show this than a disco brawl? Effortless, precise and perfectly executed, it was typical Murphy.

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Spiritualized – Ladies and Gentlemen

Spiritualized – Ladies and Gentlemen: "Music is medicine for the soul," said Jason Pierce, deciding on minimalist pill-themed artwork for his third album sleeve: "1 tablet 70 min" it reads. Pierce actually cut several minutes from the anthology in social club to circular off the figure and make the typography await smashing. Designer Mark Farrow has since said he regrets the gimmicky packaging.

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Source: https://www.nme.com/photos/50-iconic-indie-album-covers-the-fascinating-stories-behind-the-sleeves-1429676

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