4 cover stories in our archive
Behind the Covers' archive includes 4 album covers documented under the "censored" design theme, spanning the 1970s, 2010s, 2020s. These covers sit within the country, r&b, electronic, alternative, rock, hip-hop, pop tradition and feature work by Morgan Wallen, The Weeknd, Pink Floyd, Kanye West. 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.
Sitting in his lawyer's office on the way to court, Morgan Wallen glanced at the old courtroom sketches on the wall and something clicked. The cover of I'm the Problem turns that legal chapter into art: a profile drawn in the very style that captures defendants, not pop stars.
A bloodied, grinning face tilts toward the light on the cover of The Weeknd's After Hours. Shot by Anton Tammi against a sickly red glow, it borrows its title from a 1985 film and its menace from cinema. What looks like a portrait is really a confession.
Two businessmen shake hands on a sun-baked studio backlot, and one of them is on fire. Pink Floyd asked Storm Thorgerson how to picture people who hide their true feelings, and he answered: 'Set a man on fire.' A real stuntman, fifteen takes, and a singed moustache later, here's the result.
A blazing red square hides a secret behind a wall of pixels: George Condo's phoenix painting, deliberately built by Kanye West to get banned. The story of how a nude monster with a polka-dot tail and no arms sparked a retail war and a Nirvana comparison.