Black Album Covers: From Spinal Tap to Jay-Z's Black Album

Black is the cheapest, most expensive choice in record-cover design. Cheap because it shows everything; expensive because if the rest of the cover doesn't justify the void around it, the cover looks like a placeholder. The covers on this page got the rest of the cover right.

Some of them — Jay-Z's The Black Album, Metallica's untitled fourth record, Spinal Tap's hypothetical Smell the Glove — push to the limit and present a near-empty field. Others, like Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon and Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here ad campaign, use black as the stage for a single tightly framed image. A third category — Yeezus, In Utero, Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures — keeps the black background but adds one provocative element: a clear case, an angel, a pulsar.

What runs through the whole set is a rejection of decoration. Black covers don't court attention in a record-store flip-bin the way a vivid colour does. They wait for you to come to them.

For more colour-themed collections, see red album covers, blue album covers, pink album covers, and black & white album covers.