Famous Album Covers

The most famous album covers share something in common: they stopped working as packaging and started working as art. They became inseparable from the music inside them — sometimes more recognizable than the artists themselves.

Some achieved fame through pure visual genius. Storm Thorgerson of Hipgnosis stripped Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon down to a single triangular prism on a black field, with no band name and no album title. Peter Saville did something similar for Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures, using a data visualization of pulsar radio waves with no text at all.

Others became famous through controversy. Andy Warhol's functional zipper on The Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers. The dollar bill on a fishhook chasing an underwater baby on Nirvana's Nevermind. Robert Mapplethorpe's androgynous portrait of Patti Smith on Horses.

Some are famous because the photograph itself was already historic. Pennie Smith captured Paul Simonon smashing his bass on the cover of The Clash's London Calling — a shot she didn't even want used because it was slightly out of focus. It's now considered one of the greatest rock photographs ever taken.

And some became famous simply by being everywhere. Iain Macmillan's photograph of The Beatles crossing Abbey Road took six shots in ten minutes. The zebra crossing is now a Grade II listed site, recreated by tourists every single day.