29 cover stories in our archive
Behind the Covers' archive includes 29 album covers documented under the "band photo" design theme, spanning the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s. These covers sit within the indie, pop, electronic, alternative, r&b, hip-hop, rock, folk, metal, punk, reggae, country, blues tradition and feature work by Vampire Weekend, MGMT, Dave Matthews Band, TLC and others. Each entry below includes the cover artwork, the designers and photographers behind it, and a short story about the visual choices that defined the release.
The chandelier on Vampire Weekend's debut isn't a stylist's prop. It's a Polaroid snapped at a real party inside a semi-secret Columbia society, candle bulbs glowing over the heads of strangers. Here's why a band that called itself 'Upper West Side Soweto' chose a snapshot of their own origins.
Two young men stand on a beach at dusk in feathers, war paint, and hot-pink shorts, a pale moon hanging between them. This is MGMT before the world caught on: a costume-shop fever dream shot during a music video, stamped with a logo Andrew VanWyngarden drew by hand.
Thane Kerner's abstract illustration for Dave Matthews Band's breakthrough sophomore album has become synonymous with the band's visual identity. The enigmatic cover features flowing organic forms in muted earth tones, complemented by C. Taylor Crothers' band photography.
Three faces float on a field of burning orange, calm and unblinking. TLC arrived on CrazySexyCool with vulnerability and bare skin instead of baggy hoodies, and the reinvention helped make them the first girl group to go diamond. Here's the story behind that stare.
When MTV's producer looked at Kurt Cobain's set requests and asked 'You mean like a funeral?', Cobain answered 'Exactly. Like a funeral.' Seven months later he was dead, and the lilies and black candles on this cover stopped looking like staging and started looking like prophecy.
Five faces pushed to the front of the frame, lit in a cold green wash, staring out with the flat calm of people who already know they're being overlooked. This is Slowdive's Souvlaki, a 1993 shoegaze record that limped to number 51, got tepid reviews, then quietly became a touchstone. The title came from a filthy prank call.
The multi-pointed star on R.E.M.'s 1992 album once topped a motel sign on Miami's Biscayne Boulevard. Michael Stipe photographed it, the band nearly named the record after it, and a hurricane tore it down. Here's how a roadside ornament became the focal point of an alternative landmark.
Sixteen photographs in a 4×4 grid, no single hero image. U2 buried their solemn black-and-white past under painted Trabants, carnival masks, a blue cow, and a nude bassist. Here is how Berlin, Tenerife, and Morocco scattered the band across a grid built to feel like flux.
Dutch tattoo artist Henk Schiffmacher designed the tribal artwork while filmmaker Gus Van Sant shot the band portraits for this iconic alternative rock cover. The stylized tongues reaching toward a single rose merged body art culture with grunge aesthetics.
Four men stand grim against an endless Death Valley horizon, coats off in freezing cold so it would look hot. The story of U2's 1987 desert journey involves a working title called 'The Two Americas,' a lone tree found in 20 minutes, and a band picture that sent fans on pilgrimages still happening today.
Two members of Run-DMC lean against a window in matching leather, the whole frame washed in violet and acid green. There was no grand concept behind one of hip-hop's defining 1986 covers, just a label that wanted the band on the front. Here is how a tilted camera and a borrowed eye for color turned that simplicity into something striking.
A stark black pentagram on matte cover sparked Christian outrage and landed Motley Crue on ABC News. Photographer Barry Levine conceived the controversial design that defined 1980s metal rebellion.
Four figures stand in a rain-slicked King's Cross underpass, shot by Pennie Smith the day The Clash wrapped a video. One of them is still wearing a helmet from the shoot. The band gave up royalties so this triple album could sell cheap.
The striking cover photograph by Glen Christensen captures Tom Petty with an enigmatic intensity that mirrors the album's defiant spirit. Art directed by Tommy Steele and designed by Stan Evenson, the image perfectly embodies the breakthrough record that took the Heartbreakers from critical darlings to mainstream stars.
On 21 September 1979, a frustrated Paul Simonon swung his Fender bass at the floor of New York's Palladium — and Pennie Smith caught it. She thought the shot too blurry to use. Joe Strummer pointed at the contact sheet and said: 'That one.'
On the cover of Rumours, Mick Fleetwood strikes a courtly pose with wooden balls dangling between his legs. The story behind those balls, a toilet, and a couple of glasses of English ale, is stranger than anything the music suggests.
Four guys, one brick wall, and a $125 photograph that rewrote what an album cover could be. The Ramones barely sold a copy in 1976, yet the picture they posed for has been copied more than almost any other in rock. Here is how blank stares and ripped jeans became the look of punk.
An accidental yellow-tinted photograph of prison convicts caught in a spotlight became one of rock's most iconic covers. Shot at a Georgian estate, it features Wings and celebrities including Christopher Lee, Michael Parkinson, and James Coburn as escaped prisoners.
A grey concrete slab juts out of a coal slag heap, and four young men stand around it like primates confronting a mystery. The truth behind that pillar involves Stanley Kubrick, empty film canisters, and the fact that only one member of The Who could actually pee.
Keith Macmillan's War Pigs concept became iconic mismatch when label changed album title to Paranoid last-minute. Roger Brown posed as the fluorescent warrior in Black Park for heavy metal's most confusing cover.
A candid band photo taken by Bob Fogerty shows CCR in an off-duty moment, complete with a handwritten 3RD GENERATION sign - a cheeky response to critic Ralph Gleason's dismissive review. The uncool, lumberjack aesthetic perfectly captured their working-class appeal.
Five bearded men stare out from a sepia haze, dressed like figures from a century they never lived in. Elliott Landy's portrait made The Band look like ghosts of American folklore, and for a while it was the only picture the public had of them.
Four men, one zebra crossing, traffic held by a hired policeman — and one of the most copied photographs in pop. The Abbey Road cover carries no title and no band name, a decision that triggered a furious midnight phone call from EMI's chairman.
The Rolling Stones' return to their blues roots sparked a six-month delay when both UK and US record labels rejected Barry Feinstein's original toilet cover art, forcing a controversial compromise.
The debut album cover for Os Mutantes was designed and photographed by Olivier Perroy from publishing giant Editora Abril in his São Paulo home. The simple presentation matched the band's raw experimental psychedelic sound that would revolutionize Brazilian rock.
A fashion photographer borrowed a prism lens from George Harrison, asked a brand-new, unsigned band to wear the brightest clothes they could find, and split their faces into a kaleidoscope. The result became the only Pink Floyd studio album to put the band's own faces on the front. Oh, and he reportedly never got paid.
A roadie's mispronunciation gave the album its name; a chance meeting in a nightclub gave it its face. Cream's Disraeli Gears wears a fluorescent collage built from a publicity photo, scissors, and paint mixed to capture a 'warm electric sound.'
Three young men in aviator jackets and flight goggles stare out of a black void, their faces washed in unnatural blue and red light. It is Cream's 1966 debut, the first LP on Robert Stigwood's Reaction label, and the record that helped push blues into heavy, jamming new territory.
Five Beach Boys, an enclosure full of hungry goats, and a title taken so literally it got the band reportedly banned from the San Diego Zoo. The Pet Sounds cover is a pun made flesh — and the sixth member couldn't even be in the photo.