106 cover stories in our archive
Behind the Covers' archive includes 106 album covers documented under the "photography" design theme, spanning the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, 2020s. These covers sit within the country, pop, hip-hop, r&b, electronic, alternative, soul, jazz, funk, indie, rock, folk, world, metal, punk, blues tradition and feature work by Zach Bryan, Tate McRae, Bad Bunny, Lady Gaga 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.
Zach Bryan kneels beside his Labrador retriever Bud Heavy Bryan by a reflective stream in lush woods, creating an intimate portrait that mirrors his rural Oklahoma roots and the album's themes of memory and place.
The artwork for McRae's chart-topping album was photographed in October 2025 with creative directors Ludovic de Saint Sernin and Ignacio Muñoz. Three days after release, McRae controversially swapped the original back-facing cover for a simpler front-facing version, later returning to the original design.
Two white plastic chairs sit against a plantain tree backdrop in this deceptively simple cover that celebrates Puerto Rican identity. The ordinary objects transform into symbols of community, memory, and cultural resistance through Bad Bunny's artistic vision.
Frank Lebon created an edgy portrait for Lady Gaga's seventh studio album, featuring her face distorted behind shattered glass in stark black and white. The cover reflects the album's dark gothic aesthetic and chaotic genre-blending approach.
SZA transforms into a shimmering insect creature for this deluxe reissue cover, shot by Cassidy Meyers. The bug persona originated from her Hot Ones appearance where she quipped about being 'tired of not being a bug.'
Photographed by Dave Free with lighting direction by Eduardo Silva, the stark black-and-white cover shows Kendrick posed with his 1987 Buick Grand National Experimental. The minimalist composition reflects pgLang's creative direction, connecting Lamar's birth year to automotive legacy.
Shot entirely underwater in a 20x20x10 foot heated tank, the cover depicts Eilish submerged in deep blue water, creating visual tension between soft intimacy and hard environment. The seven-hour shoot required Eilish to hold her breath for extended periods without breathing equipment.
Carpenter's sixth studio album cover sparked controversy for its resemblance to a 2015 French magazine photo featuring model Tiffany Collier photographed by Bruno Juminer.
Tyler, The Creator's album cover for CHROMAKOPIA captures the theatrics of 1950s film noir with its sepia-toned imagery. The masked rapper, photographed by Luis Perez, conjures classic Hollywood glamour while concealing his identity behind a specially crafted ceramic mask.
Tate McRae chose to pose with hockey knee pads painted with the album title as a tribute to her Calgary roots. The shoot was captured in October 2023, creating a striking visual of her standing over white goalie pads with blue lettering.
A grainy photograph of Bryan smoking a cigarette serves as the stark, minimalist cover for his breakthrough self-titled album. The intimate image perfectly captures the raw, authentic spirit of the country rock collection.
The debut album cover for Tate McRae's breakthrough record revealed alongside the album title on April 1, 2022. The artwork supported her emotionally raw debut exploring themes of growing up, heartbreak, and self-discovery.
Taylor Swift's tenth album features ethereal blue-purple gradient portraits by photographer Beth Garrabrant, shot on film to capture the nocturnal aesthetic of Swift's sleepless nights concept album.
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.
Tyler in a platinum blonde wig, mint-green suit, and dark sunglasses against bright pink — introducing the lovesick alter ego 'Igor' and marking a dramatic departure from his earlier punk-rap visual identity toward retro-mod sophistication.
A striking black-and-white portrait shows Swift with newspaper-style text covering half her face, embodying her transformation from country sweetheart to defiant pop star after public controversies.
She faces you head-on, hair scattered with dozens of half-clipped clips, mid-transformation and utterly still. Behind Solange's 2016 portrait is a partnership that began with a single Instagram discovery and grew into a statement about black women's solidarity.
The blurred, green-tinted photograph with Ocean's hand partially covering his face reflects the album's core themes: memory, identity, sexual fluidity, and emotional opacity. The lo-fi, anti-commercial quality matched his decision to release independently.
Israeli artist Roy Nachum created a photorealistic painting of young Rihanna holding a black balloon with a crown covering her eyes, overlaid with Braille poetry by Chloe Mitchell - making it the first album cover to incorporate physical Braille for accessibility.
A black-and-white house party erupts on the White House lawn, dollar bills fanned in fists, a baby cradled in the crowd, and a dead judge sprawled at everyone's feet. Kendrick Lamar's 2015 photograph turned the seat of American power into a stage for the kids he grew up with in Compton.
A Polaroid-style portrait crops Swift's face below her eyes, creating mystery about the album's emotional content. The photography duo Lowfield shot over 400 Polaroid photographs for the project.
Lady Gaga's polarizing motorcycle-fusion cover sparked immediate controversy with fans calling it a "cheap Photoshop job." Shot by Nick Knight with the Haus of Gaga team, the image merged Gaga's head and arms with a custom motorcycle called "Predator."
The debut album cover features a Polaroid photograph of a chandelier in St. Anthony Hall, a Columbia University semi-secret society, taken during one of the band's early campus performances.
A blurry, ghostly photograph of a hooded figure barely visible in darkness — like surveillance footage or a half-remembered dream. At release, the artist's identity was unknown, making the faceless cover a literal representation of musical anonymity.
She sits alone on a wooden stool against a chalk-streaked black wall, hands clasped, gaze level and unflinching. The cover of Back to Black froze Amy Winehouse at the threshold of fame, in a Kensal Rise room the photographer called 'the black room'. Behind the calm pose sat an album built from real heartbreak.
The cover features a blurry, candid photo of Arctic Monkeys' friend Chris McClure smoking in a nightclub, captured during their early Sheffield club days. This lo-fi snapshot perfectly embodied the band's working-class authenticity and DIY aesthetic.
A stark grayscale portrait of MF DOOM in his metal mask, shot at Stones Throw's LA house and designed by Jeff Jank. The minimal composition features a distinctive orange square accent.
The somber cover of an outstretched hand against a wintry background, framed by ornate borders, was inspired by the deaths of several band members' family members during recording — yet the album and its art are ultimately life-affirming.
The photograph hiding behind Jay-Z's iconic Black Album cover was actually taken two years earlier for The Blueprint, showing the rapper in a New York Jets jersey before being heavily edited into the ghostly, fading-to-black image that became one of hip-hop's most recognizable covers.
Sam Jones shot hundreds of photos of Chicago before Lawrence Azerrad found the perfect Marina City image. Azerrad removed neighboring buildings to focus on the twin towers, creating an iconic cover that fans now call the Wilco Towers.
The stark black and white photograph of a solitary figure in an empty hallway perfectly captured the alienation and urban loneliness at the heart of Interpol's debut. Shot with deliberate grain and shadow, it became an instant template for indie rock minimalism.
A fashion shoot gone legendary: Norwegian photographer Sølve Sundsbø's experimental 3D scan of a model became Coldplay's iconic 2002 cover after Chris Martin spotted it in Dazed & Confused magazine.
The strict red-white-black palette extended to everything — instruments, clothing, stage design — creating one of the most effective branding exercises in rock history, born from genuine artistic conviction about how constraints force greater creativity.
The Strokes' debut cover features a cropped intimate photograph that proved too provocative for American retailers, forcing the band to create an alternate version with abstract particle imagery for the US market.
A surreal dream vision of a swimming pool where water becomes sky, creating one of alternative rock's most memorable album covers through a groundbreaking digital collage.
Nick Knight's extreme close-up of a stag beetle — rendered with scientific precision in high contrast — is simultaneously beautiful and menacing, perfectly matching the album's dark, claustrophobic, paranoid atmosphere.
Missy in a giant inflated garbage-bag suit shot with a fisheye lens — a radical rejection of the 'video vixen' aesthetic that defined female hip-hop imagery. The deliberately unflattering look was a power move: her talent would speak for itself.
A provocative fisheye-lens photograph taken spontaneously at a Seattle condo during the album's recording sessions. The image of Lisa Hughes in a jacuzzi became one of the most iconic alternative metal covers of the 1990s.
Marc Baptiste's warm golden portrait of Badu in her signature towering headwrap — a spiritual and cultural statement, not a fashion choice — became the visual template for the neo-soul movement, countering the chrome-and-neon imagery of mainstream 1990s R&B.
The dual-image cover combines Morissette crouched on a Malibu cliff with a close-up portrait, enhanced by vivid reds, blues, and greens alongside typewriter-style fonts to capture the album's raw emotional intensity.
On 1 April 1995, Björk stood in Piccadilly Circus in a jacket made of airmail envelope paper, surrounded by giant postcards. The cover of Post turned homesickness into design: a woman trying to mail herself back to Iceland.
A man in a woman's sequinned thrift-store jacket, eyes closed, lost in music he was listening to as the shutter clicked. Columbia's bosses hated it, thinking he looked like a lounge singer. Jeff Buckley overruled them all.
Four ordinary-looking guys standing against a flat blue background with no rock star posturing — the anti-cool, anti-glamour presentation was radical in early-1990s alternative rock and became a template for nerd identity in music.
A bare-skinned baby with a towering afro sits alone on white, and for 17 years nobody knew who he was. The mystery child on The Notorious B.I.G.'s 1994 debut was paid $150 for a two-hour shoot, and his face became one of hip-hop's most argued-over images.
Two greyhounds tear down a track on the cover of Blur's Parklife, and not a single band member is in sight. The image is a 1988 sports photo of a race at Romford Stadium, lifted from a picture library and reframed by designers who treated Blur like a product on a betting-shop window.
A childhood photograph of seven-year-old Nas superimposed via double exposure over a nighttime shot of the Queensbridge Houses — the ghostly overlay captures the collision between childhood innocence and adult reality that defines the album.
The grainy, noir-ish photograph with a woman's face partially obscured in shadow creates an atmosphere of nocturnal melancholy — the purest visual expression of the 'Bristol Sound' aesthetic of dark, cinematic trip-hop.
The living room belonged to guitarist Bonehead's house in Didsbury, and everything you see—from the TV to the champagne bottle—was meticulously arranged by designer Brian Cannon to create rock and roll's most perfectly cluttered domestic scene.
Two California child models Ali Laenger and LySandra Roberts wearing fairy wings created one of the 90s' most iconic album covers. The image perfectly captured childhood innocence that contrasted with Billy Corgan's introspective lyrics.
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.
A four-month-old baby swims naked toward a dollar bill on a fishhook, and decades later that baby would sue the band. The story behind Nirvana's 1991 cover runs from a TV program on water births to a censorship fight Kurt Cobain won with a single outrageous sentence.
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.
The haunting cover of Slint's masterpiece was shot by musician Will Oldham at a local quarry, featuring the band members floating eerily in murky water. The image perfectly captures the album's unsettling atmosphere and became one of indie rock's most mysterious covers.
Anton Corbijn's arresting rose-and-leather photograph defied all expectations for electronic music packaging. The Dutch artist created Depeche Mode's most iconic cover by pairing delicate flowers with fetishistic black leather in a single provocative frame.
A face half-drowned in flowers and shadow, blurred to the edge of vanishing. The man behind The Cure's Disintegration never meant to be on its cover at all, yet there he is, seeping into the dark. Andy Vella built the whole image from Polaroids, projected and re-photographed until colour itself came apart.
Simon Larbalestier's heavily manipulated photograph of a macaque — distorted through multiple exposures and analog techniques — captures the Pixies' surrealist sensibility, connecting to the album's themes of nature, primitivism, and the relationship between humans and animals.
The iconic panoramic street corner shot was captured by Jeremy Shatan but credited to Nathanial Hornblower, Adam Yauch's pseudonym. The fictional Paul's Boutique sign was hung over Lee's Sportswear for the shoot.
A topless flamenco dancer arches against a crumbling wall, a crucifix glinting beside her, a torn movie poster behind. Pixies' debut buries Catholic imagery, a broken guitar neck, and a strange tonal reversal into one sepia frame. The story of how it was built above a London pub in a single day is stranger than the photo.
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.
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.
Prince on a custom purple motorcycle, bathed in purple light and smoke, wearing a sequined jacket — the image that cemented purple as his personal brand. After his death in 2016, Pantone created a custom shade called 'Love Symbol #2' in his honor.
Annie Leibovitz shot Springsteen from behind facing an American flag — jeans, white t-shirt, red cap in pocket matching the flag's colors. The deliberate ambiguity mirrors the title track: a protest song widely misread as a patriotic anthem.
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.
The white suit on the most recognizable man in pop music wasn't his at all. It belonged to the photographer, who'd simply worn it to work that day. The story behind Michael Jackson's Thriller cover is a small accident that helped shape an image seen around the world.
Ozzy's solo debut cover features the Prince of Darkness clutching crosses in a dramatic studio portrait that launched his post-Sabbath reinvention. Shot by Fin Costello at Metropolitan Wharf in London's Wapping district, the theatrical imagery perfectly captured the album's dark comic book aesthetic.
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.'
Frank Stefanko's stark portrait of Springsteen in his Haddonfield bedroom captures the album's raw, desperate mood. Shot against flowery wallpaper in winter 1978, the image strips away celebrity artifice to reveal the working-class character at the heart of the songs.
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.
The iconic portrait of Seger on the Night Moves cover was shot by Bay City native Tom Bert, who previously photographed Neil Diamond and would later win a Grammy for his Silver Bullet Band inner sleeve photography on Against the Wind.
Peter Corriston spent weeks combing New York for the perfect tenement, then cropped out an entire floor so the buildings would fit a square sleeve. The windows of 96-98 St. Mark's Place became die-cut peepholes that could spell out a name and reveal everyone from Buzz Aldrin to Lee Harvey Oswald.
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.
Robert Mapplethorpe's photograph of Smith — jacket over shoulder, no makeup, androgynous confidence — demolished gendered expectations for female musicians. It has been called the greatest rock and roll portrait ever taken.
Shot by Hope Powell and art directed by Herb Burnette, this cover introduced a glamorous new look for Dolly. The soft-focus portrait features teased blonde hair and marked Parton's transition into solo stardom.
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.
Brian Duffy's photograph of Bowie with Pierre LaRoche's red and blue lightning bolt painted across his face became the single most recognizable image associated with David Bowie — a visual icon of fractured identity and glam rock.
Marc Bolan's iconic top-hatted portrait sparked one of rock's greatest photo credit controversies. The grainy black-and-white image became accidentally legendary when an eager darkroom technician mishandled the developing chemicals.
On a cold, wet January night in 1972, a man stood alone under a furrier's sign in a London cul-de-sac, holding a borrowed guitar and pretending to be an alien. The black-and-white photograph that resulted was hand-painted into a sci-fi vision, and the shop owners were not amused.
The landmark 1971 album that made Loretta Lynn a country icon features her signature autobiographical title track. Record World praised the "pretty cover, pretty singing, pretty girl" while Billboard called it a "great package" with distinctive country flavor.
A picture frame holding a stooped old man bears no band name, no title, nothing, just a record so confident it dared customers to recognize it. For fifty years everyone called the image a Victorian oil painting. In 2023, the truth turned out to be stranger, and far more human.
The iconic cover features McLean's thumb painted in red, white and blue against an American flag backdrop. Photographer George S. Whiteman created this patriotic image that became as memorable as the album's epic title track.
The close-up of Mitchell's face bathed in monochromatic blue transforms a portrait into an emotional statement — her sadness and longing literally coloring everything. She described making the album as feeling 'like a cellophane wrapper on a cigarette pack.'
A Black woman's face emerging from earth — mouth open in a scream or ecstatic cry — matches the primal intensity of Eddie Hazel's legendary guitar solo, recorded in a single take under the influence of LSD.
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.
The iconic American Beauty cover features a rose surrounded by ambigram lettering that also reads 'American Reality.' Created by the legendary Kelley/Mouse Studios duo, it ranked 63rd on Rolling Stone's best album covers list.
A cloaked figure stands frozen before a haunted-looking watermill, draped in false-color crimson and shadow. For fifty years no one knew who she was. The mist on the water was faked with dry ice, then a smoke machine, in a morning shoot that helped launch heavy metal.
George Hardie transformed Sam Shere's iconic 1937 Hindenburg disaster photograph into a haunting stipple illustration using a technical pen, creating one of rock's most powerful visual statements for just £60.
When Milton Glaser built this 1969 cover, he wanted strangers to stop and ask 'What the hell is that?' The face staring back, half-lit and unblinking under a battered hat, belonged to an unknown songwriter whose name couldn't sell a single record. So Glaser sold the stare instead.
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 stark close-up of Cash's intense gaze captured the raw authenticity of his legendary prison performance. Jim Marshall was the only official photographer present at the historic January 13, 1968 concert.
Jimi Hendrix's double album sparked international controversy with its provocative cover featuring 19 nude women photographed by David Montgomery. The image was so scandalous that many countries banned it, forcing alternative covers to be created for different markets.
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 concept was born from Paul McCartney's idea that the Beatles would become an entirely fictional band. The cover depicts the band in colorful satin military uniforms standing in front of a crowd of life-size cardboard cutouts of famous figures.
Jerry Schatzberg's powerful portrait of Aretha Franklin, shot on February 16, 1967, captures the emergence of the Queen of Soul. The intimate photo shoot in New York crystallized her newfound artistic freedom.
Karl Ferris pioneered the use of infrared film for album art, creating an otherworldly image where the band appears in unnatural purple, orange, and green hues through a fisheye lens — as if Hendrix had literally arrived from another dimension.
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.
Cream's debut album features one of rock's most enigmatic covers - a stark black and white photograph of three mysterious figures that perfectly captured the band's dark, blues-heavy sound before anyone knew what a supergroup looked like.
A freezing February afternoon in Greenwich Village, a young couple walking arm-in-arm down a slushy street, and a photographer who admitted he had no real plan. The shot that resulted rewrote what an album cover could be. But the woman beside Bob Dylan was never named, and four songs vanished from the record just before it shipped.
One of the most infamous album covers ever created, featuring a 12-foot plywood Satan cutout designed by Ira Louvin and burning kerosene-soaked tires in a rock quarry. The brothers nearly got burned during the photo shoot when kerosene-soaked rocks exploded.
Chess Records assembled this debut album from Bo Diddley's early singles, capturing the foundational Bo Diddley beat. The cover shows Diddley holding his Gretsch G6131T Jet guitar in a striking portrait by photographer Chuck Stewart.
Francis Wolff's pensive photograph of Coltrane, cropped and designed by Reid Miles, became one of jazz's most iconic album covers. The minimalist Blue Note aesthetic perfectly matched the introspective masterpiece within.
The debut album's cover features a striking black-and-white close-up photograph of Little Richard against a bright yellow background. Billboard praised the "striking" cover art upon its 1957 release, helping establish the visual identity of rock and roll's most flamboyant pioneer.
Chuck Berry's debut album features a striking cover image taken from his performance in the 1956 film Rock, Rock, Rock! The still shot shows Berry with his guitar slung in front of him, capturing the raw energy of early rock and roll.
A young man caught mid-howl, mouth wide, eyes shut, hammering an acoustic guitar in pink and green block letters. For nearly fifty years the wrong photographer got the credit for one of rock's most copied covers. Here's who really shot it, and why The Clash stole it.