8 cover stories in our archive
Behind the Covers' archive includes 8 album covers documented under the "pop art" design theme, spanning the 1960s, 1970s, 2020s. These covers sit within the pop, indie, rock, blues, punk tradition and feature work by Sabrina Carpenter, Bad Bunny, Supertramp, The Who 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.
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.
A heartbroken cartoon heart with one swollen eye stands alone on a golden dune while dolphins leap over a candy-pink sky. It became the year's best-selling album. The strange, tender story of how Bad Bunny's drawing turned into Un Verano Sin Ti.
A jolly waitress named Libby hoists a glass of orange juice where the Statue of Liberty should hold her torch, and behind her Manhattan is built entirely from cereal boxes and cutlery, all spray-painted white. Supertramp's 1979 blockbuster turned a diner breakfast into the New York skyline and won a Grammy for it.
When Decca wanted The Who's faces on the cover of Tommy, they cut tiny windows into Mike McInnerney's blue diamond-sphere and slipped the band inside. The result: a deaf, dumb and blind boy's world, pressed against the glass of an infinite cage.
In 1968 the world's biggest band handed record buyers a sleeve that looked like nothing at all: pure white, a whisper of embossed type, a serial number in the corner. Richard Hamilton's blank canvas was the deliberate anti-Sgt. Pepper, and it accidentally rechristened the album forever.
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.'
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.
A single yellow banana on white, with an instruction to peel it. Andy Warhol's design for The Velvet Underground's 1967 debut sold poorly, sparked lawsuits decades later, and was once called the best album cover ever made.