3 cover stories in our archive
Behind the Covers' archive includes 3 album covers documented under the "documentary style" design theme, spanning the 1970s, 1980s. These covers sit within the hip-hop, folk, world, pop, soul, r&b tradition and feature work by N.W.A, Paul Simon, Marvin Gaye. 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.
You are lying on the ground in a downtown LA alley, six young men staring down at you, one aiming a handgun straight into the lens. That is the view N.W.A handed the world in 1988, and the photographer who took it had never shot a rap group in his life.
The cover features Paul Simon standing casually against Elvis Presley's famous Graceland mansion gates, creating an audacious visual connection between two American music legends. The simple snapshot aesthetic belied the album's groundbreaking fusion of American folk and South African sounds.
Marvin Gaye's masterpiece broke Motown's visual rules with an intimate portrait showing the artist in a knit cap looking pensively into the distance. The cover's casual, contemplative mood perfectly matched the album's shift from pop to socially conscious soul.