Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Lawrence Azerrad and Jeff Tweedy struggled with the design for Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. They wanted something that connected the band to Chicago, so they combed through hundreds of photos shot by Sam Jones, who was documenting the album's creation for his film I Am Trying to Break Your Heart.

Nothing was working until they saw a picture of Marina City. Azerrad removed the neighboring buildings from Jones' image to keep focus on the towers, and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot had its cover.

Jones captured the iconic shot at a slight angle, allowing the leaning towers to perfectly capture the unbalanced place Wilco and the world were in at the time. The photograph required digital manipulation to achieve the final look - Jones' angle would have required removing portions of nearby buildings in real life.

The album was originally scheduled for release on September 11, 2001, but Reprise Records rejected it for being too experimental. Wilco streamed the album for free on their website that September, then signed with Nonesuch Records in November.

The cover took on unintended meaning after 9/11. The twin Marina City towers bore an eerie resemblance to the fallen World Trade Center towers, while songs like Ashes of American Flags and lyrics about tall buildings shaking gained terrible new resonance.

Designed by architect Bertrand Goldberg and opened in 1962, Marina City was built as a city within a city following the 1871 Chicago Fire. The towers were seen as confusing when first built but became regarded as ahead of their time - much like Wilco's experimental album.

The cover was named in Paste Magazine's Top 25 Album Covers of the Decade and The Greatest Album Covers of All Time. Marina City is still called the Wilco Towers by fans, cementing the album's cultural impact on Chicago's skyline.