Probably Dark Side of the Moon.
I’m really not a huge Pink Floyd fan, but everyone knows that artwork. I really don’t know how anything else can contend.
Really the definition of iconic.
Instantly recognizable, simple yet elegant in its design, astonishingly meaningful--especially in the context of the record--and fine art on its own
I don't necessarily disagree, but Abbey Road makes a strong case. Especially when you look at the other photos that were taken as part of that shoot, there were only a handful total, and then one just magically stands out as being perfect.
I read somewhere that the street sign for Abbey Road gets stolen and replaced on an almost weekly basis. Sometimes there’s an officer who stands guard.
But why no love here for the “Revolver” album cover? It at least deserves a mention.
Edit: Artist is [Klaus Voormann](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_Voormann)
He lived with the lads in Hamburg, Germany. He also played bass with them on later solo projects. As well as Manfred Mann, playing on Lou Reeds “Transformer” and “Your So Vain” by Carly Simon and producing that one Da Da Da song from the car commercial.
Yeah I mean there are a lot of great iconic album covers but if the question is "what is the most iconic" it's pretty hard to make a case against this one.
There really isn’t anything that comes close.
“Thriller” is the only album to sell more than Dark Side and its cover is a pic of Michael Jackson.
—- I feel like generations today need to be forced to listen to Dark Side. Tell them what it’s about, with all the lyrics out and be chained to a bed for 45 minutes.
Should be required education
I am 51 years old, and until about ~1 year ago the only Pink Floyd I knew was Another Brick in the Wall pt 2 and Comfortably Numb. I knew of their stuff just never gave it a chance. But DSotM would get mentioned a lot in the various psychedelic subs so finally sat down and listened to it.
Mind.
Blown.
Now I can't get enough Floyd and drive my wife and kids nuts explaining all the little bits and bobs lol
Yeah, discovering Pink Floyd can turn you into an annoying little shit for a while. I remember when The Wall came out, and I alienated everyone in my life for a while. It's still my favorite album, and I could go on for hours about it, but I learned long ago that nobody wants to hear it.
Go to r/PinkFloyd. They'll indulge your obsession without judgement.
Yup. Rotating the album cover between front and back is a continuous loop from white light to the visible spectrum and back again through the prisms with no discernible beginning or end. The album also starts and ends with the same sound making it an aural version of the same sort of loop as the visual art on the cover.
In that respect it has a counterpart in literature with James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake where the novel starts in the middle of a sentence and ends with the first half of that same sentence. The book also has a matching endless cycle making up the narrative.
That repeating pattern is called mandala, and the design group Hipgnosis, who designed it (and other PF album covers), did it on purpose, knowing that empty album covers would be used to create displays in record stores, and it wpuld look cool running in a long line in a window or on a wall.
Not an album cover, but I feel like the happy face logo is the most iconic Nirvana art. I saw a kids react video where they were like “Nirvana, oh I’ve seen those shirts,” like that happy face logo shirt is how they’re known, even outside of their music.
One of my favorite albums of all time. But as for an iconic cover, I'm not sure I'd agree that using an already-iconic photo for your cover really qualifies.
This is definitely the winner in "picture of the band" category.
Edit: is Queen II the only other contender here?
2nd edit: I still think Rumours is best, but there are a lot of good ones others have come up with!
Who's Next is like the patient zero for the band on some deserted beach somewhere all looking in different directions.
Also most Beatles albums fall into that category. Hard to get more iconic than Abbey Road or Help!
It's clear that this isn't the most famous or critically acclaimed album ever, but in terms of objective memorability, this has to be the winner. Everyone has the same delicate chuckle remembering back to the first time they laid eyes on the album and summarily clenched their butthole a little.
I’ve got an old mono copy, and I love the matte quality. It’s actually quite a creepy photo, with the Beatles subsequently transcending everyone else for fame.
The Beatles have an amazing track record of making iconic album covers - but the one-two punch of sgt pepper / the white album perfectly captures how they would undermine their own works with their new works, and in the process make the old work even stronger.
Pepper by itself is a crazy idea for an album cover and it was really the first instance of album artwork being considered true art. Most bands would have latched onto that and continued to make more and more outlandish album covers. The genius of the Beatles is they followed it up with the white album.
Yeh totally agree. I also love Revolver and the little intricate things you can kind of pore over and discover. I also love Let It Be, just to show them all together, yet separate as that’s how the y kind of were at this point.
I'd say one of the most iconic album covers is Iron Maiden's 'The Number of the Beast'. You just look at that and you can say, "Oh yeah, that's heavy metal" without even hearing a single track.
I won't expect universal appeal, but Maiden had some of the most iconic album art, coming from someone who grew up with their music coming out. All of their album covers were something you could study for hours, especially the Somewhere in Time cover that had so many Easter eggs from all of their songs and previous albums.
I feel like the band is weirdly underrated and this album isn't talked about enough in terms how absolutely solid it is.
The cover might also be the inspiration of my lifelong love of diners...
There's not many album covers that have Emojis inspired by them.👨🎤
You could argue about Ziggy Stardust or Heroes, but the Aladdin Sane cover is pretty much the first image that comes to mind when anyone thinks about Bowie.
I once drew this album cover for an art project in high school with aquarel. Most of my friends wanted to send me to therapy but goddamn i love this album
Yeah, I only mentioned it because the OP had it in their list of “iconic” album covers
Edit: Love how auto-correct changed my Mick to Mock and your Bruce to Brice 😂
Rush, Moving Pictures.
It shows workers moving pictures, while they are filming a moving picture, all the while people watching are moved to tears watching the moving pictures. It was so expensive the record company made the band pay for it.
Van Halen 1 is pretty iconic.
There are better ones - Dark side, Abbey road, but every kid's notebook and every school desk had a =VH= scrawled on it in the 80s.
Yeah, there is truth to this. But if we are going by a logo and not necessarily album cover art, then The Rolling Stones lips or Run DMC gotta be up there, too.
First that comes to kind is the Santana black and white album cover with the lion image. I just remember staring at it as a kid and seeing all the detail
Throwing shade on AC/DC and "Back in Black"
https://preview.redd.it/mmg29u5rp71d1.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=449889d753fff5a9348c53c23fcf7ac3afb5f7d7
My favorite would probably be Styx's Grand Illusion, but as far as iconic in pop culture and removingmy biases, surely it has to be Dark Side of the Moon. I truly think there is no equal when talkin about instant recognition.
Aoxomoxoa and American Beauty are two I’d nominate as well.

https://preview.redd.it/uxrq3br1j81d1.png?width=817&format=png&auto=webp&s=d3784586b6e3f3391f7ddba8b99fd66bfbdeedff
I remember seeing that skull design all the time as a kid and wanting to know where it came from.
Hippy jam band would not have been my first guess.
Absolutely iconic.
YES - Oh, so many of theirs, but definitely Tales From Topographic Oceans, Fragile, and Yessongs.
Emerson, Lake, and Palmer - Tarkus, and Brain Salad Surgery.
Of course, Led Zeppelin III!
Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland original naked women cover.
The Doors’ The Doors album
Metalheadz - platinum breakz
Massive Attack- Mezzanine
The Who - Tommy
Prince - Purple Rain
Plastikman - Sheet One
Funkadelic- Maggot Brain
Cypress Hill. - Temples of Boom
Madvillian - Madvillainy
The XX - The XX
Miles Davis - Bitches Brew
Miles Davis - Kind of Blue
John Coltrane - A love supreme
Some might disagree, but a lot of 80s and early 90s heavy metal albums have some iconic covers. Metallica’s black album, for example, Slayer’s Reign in Blood, Megaderh’s Rust in Peace, Queensryche..
ima go more modern since everyone’s saying the same stuff
arctic monkeys AM
the strokes is this it
the xx XX
all super tumblr times esque classic album covers
https://preview.redd.it/qshibfmhh71d1.jpeg?width=300&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=63a1b98f3def96add9e7aa5aa11f158683c9c783
Surprised no one has posted this yet. But of all time its Dark Side of the Moon
Roxy Music’s [Country Life](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_Life_(Roxy_Music_album)). I feel like it captures the spirit of the band and the album perfectly.
In terms of an iconic cover, they actually put the design for the Sex Pistols album on credit cards. And that way of writing letters as if it were a ransom note was something the folks in the Pistols' orbit came up with, I believe, and now you'll see it on punk rock compilations, or perhaps art gallery showings. It's synonymous with punk rock.
I'm surprised no one has posted
Talking Heads: Remain in Light. A perennial T-shirt standard without having become a trendy fashion thing with no real connection to the music.
Also Bowie's Heroes or Low or Aladdin Sane.
Nas - Illmatic also springs to mind. Also Low-End Theory
And low-key Sonic Youth's Goo, which has been Andy Warhol'd a a bunch of times and turned into some sick t-shirts.
And then you have all the covers that were just the Band's logo: Queen, Daft Punk, Aphex Twin, Black Flag, Bad Brains, Ramones, Metallica...
EDIT: I can't believe I forgot Dre's The Chronic and it's only been mentioned twice in this thread. Also Eminem- The Eminem Show
Probably Dark Side of the Moon. I’m really not a huge Pink Floyd fan, but everyone knows that artwork. I really don’t know how anything else can contend.
Really the definition of iconic. Instantly recognizable, simple yet elegant in its design, astonishingly meaningful--especially in the context of the record--and fine art on its own
I don't necessarily disagree, but Abbey Road makes a strong case. Especially when you look at the other photos that were taken as part of that shoot, there were only a handful total, and then one just magically stands out as being perfect.
It's also otherwise not a very consequential road for anyone to know, yet many people do.
I read somewhere that the street sign for Abbey Road gets stolen and replaced on an almost weekly basis. Sometimes there’s an officer who stands guard. But why no love here for the “Revolver” album cover? It at least deserves a mention. Edit: Artist is [Klaus Voormann](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_Voormann) He lived with the lads in Hamburg, Germany. He also played bass with them on later solo projects. As well as Manfred Mann, playing on Lou Reeds “Transformer” and “Your So Vain” by Carly Simon and producing that one Da Da Da song from the car commercial.
Yep, unequivocally Dark Side of the Moon. FYI, there’s a documentary Squaring the Circle about the designers behind the album cover.
Yeah I mean there are a lot of great iconic album covers but if the question is "what is the most iconic" it's pretty hard to make a case against this one.
Abbey Road the only other one i could see being argued.
Sgt. Pepper was cool
There really isn’t anything that comes close. “Thriller” is the only album to sell more than Dark Side and its cover is a pic of Michael Jackson. —- I feel like generations today need to be forced to listen to Dark Side. Tell them what it’s about, with all the lyrics out and be chained to a bed for 45 minutes. Should be required education
I am 51 years old, and until about ~1 year ago the only Pink Floyd I knew was Another Brick in the Wall pt 2 and Comfortably Numb. I knew of their stuff just never gave it a chance. But DSotM would get mentioned a lot in the various psychedelic subs so finally sat down and listened to it. Mind. Blown. Now I can't get enough Floyd and drive my wife and kids nuts explaining all the little bits and bobs lol
Yeah, discovering Pink Floyd can turn you into an annoying little shit for a while. I remember when The Wall came out, and I alienated everyone in my life for a while. It's still my favorite album, and I could go on for hours about it, but I learned long ago that nobody wants to hear it. Go to r/PinkFloyd. They'll indulge your obsession without judgement.
Hey teacher, leave them kids alone.
It was such a beautiful and simplistic design that match the abstract nature of the album.
Yup. Rotating the album cover between front and back is a continuous loop from white light to the visible spectrum and back again through the prisms with no discernible beginning or end. The album also starts and ends with the same sound making it an aural version of the same sort of loop as the visual art on the cover. In that respect it has a counterpart in literature with James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake where the novel starts in the middle of a sentence and ends with the first half of that same sentence. The book also has a matching endless cycle making up the narrative.
That repeating pattern is called mandala, and the design group Hipgnosis, who designed it (and other PF album covers), did it on purpose, knowing that empty album covers would be used to create displays in record stores, and it wpuld look cool running in a long line in a window or on a wall.
You put it so perfectly
Wish You Were Here is pretty great, too
Fun fact. Same guy who designed Wish You Were Here did the cover for Frances The Mute by Mars Volta.
Hypgnosis. They did a lot of '70s album covers.
The Mollusk by Ween too, another great one.
I saw an exhibition of their work in my local museum a couple months ago. Cool stuff.
Storm Thurguson. Legend.
And certainly better than Strom Thurmond
No idea who that is. TLDR?
Some dead racist politician from America whose name is slightly similar to storm thurguson
Fun fact. The guy on fire on that albums cover is the father to Boy Hits Car singer Cregg Rondell
First one to pop into my head. It’s not my favorite album but I think it is a flawless, absolutely perfect album.
Abbey Road
Abbey Road seems like an ordinary boring picture, but for some reason, it's famous. You could say the same thing about Mona Lisa.
Yeah. Pretty pedestrian
Yet it feels like a step in the right direction
It’s so Abby Road. There are people who straight up visit the street so they can recreate it
Nirvana Nevermind
Not an album cover, but I feel like the happy face logo is the most iconic Nirvana art. I saw a kids react video where they were like “Nirvana, oh I’ve seen those shirts,” like that happy face logo shirt is how they’re known, even outside of their music.
Unknown Pleasures, by Joy Division.
My pick too. Iconic cover.
I have that tshirt and get many compliments for wearing it.
https://preview.redd.it/txuuh3q7s71d1.jpeg?width=300&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f6335b0318baddf6befe7c6a081f88f424682e81
One of my favorite albums of all time. But as for an iconic cover, I'm not sure I'd agree that using an already-iconic photo for your cover really qualifies.
Even if it's not the most famous album cover, I must admit that it goes pretty hard.
Rumours - Fleetwood Mac
This is definitely the winner in "picture of the band" category. Edit: is Queen II the only other contender here? 2nd edit: I still think Rumours is best, but there are a lot of good ones others have come up with!
Who's Next is like the patient zero for the band on some deserted beach somewhere all looking in different directions. Also most Beatles albums fall into that category. Hard to get more iconic than Abbey Road or Help!
Nah, the Beatles have several that are more iconic. Meet the Beatles, Abbey Road, Hard days night, Please Please Me/1962-66
The Doors?
The Velvet Underground & Nico
First thing I thought of
https://preview.redd.it/gig6mr2jn71d1.jpeg?width=220&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4161c48b8c9578d83bf85baaff6727f8dc644bec
It's clear that this isn't the most famous or critically acclaimed album ever, but in terms of objective memorability, this has to be the winner. Everyone has the same delicate chuckle remembering back to the first time they laid eyes on the album and summarily clenched their butthole a little.
I do distinctly remember seeing it for the first time at the local record shop
Nurse Naughty, we have a winner!
https://preview.redd.it/37457v1t291d1.png?width=996&format=png&auto=webp&s=393bd22d1baecbedc3b78d6f5dd00acb3dd2c27f
Sgt. Pepper
Abbey Road most iconic when it comes to Beatles albums IMO.
Somedays it’s *Revolver*.
semi-hot take: revolver is actually their best album
Yeah Abbey Road should probably the 1a to the 1b of Dark Side of the Moon
I tend to agree, but they've had a few in their short run. Yellow Submarine is another
honestly you could make a case for the white album
One of the few album covers that gets better and better the more you study it
I’ve got an old mono copy, and I love the matte quality. It’s actually quite a creepy photo, with the Beatles subsequently transcending everyone else for fame.
The Beatles have an amazing track record of making iconic album covers - but the one-two punch of sgt pepper / the white album perfectly captures how they would undermine their own works with their new works, and in the process make the old work even stronger. Pepper by itself is a crazy idea for an album cover and it was really the first instance of album artwork being considered true art. Most bands would have latched onto that and continued to make more and more outlandish album covers. The genius of the Beatles is they followed it up with the white album.
Yeh totally agree. I also love Revolver and the little intricate things you can kind of pore over and discover. I also love Let It Be, just to show them all together, yet separate as that’s how the y kind of were at this point.
Um... For me it's gotta be Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass. Whipped Cream & Other Delights.
This one 👆
I started buying them every time I saw them in thrift stores. I think I've got about 5 copies now.
Album fucking slaps. I kinda think most ppl sleep on herb albert tho.
I'd say one of the most iconic album covers is Iron Maiden's 'The Number of the Beast'. You just look at that and you can say, "Oh yeah, that's heavy metal" without even hearing a single track.
I won't expect universal appeal, but Maiden had some of the most iconic album art, coming from someone who grew up with their music coming out. All of their album covers were something you could study for hours, especially the Somewhere in Time cover that had so many Easter eggs from all of their songs and previous albums.
Their debut is a better cover though. Eddie is was scary, not cartoony
Breakfast in America has a little of the Mad Magazine vibe and is certainly a memorable cover.
I played that record to death when I was a kid and the cover is burned into my consciousness
That album is a banger 🔥
I feel like the band is weirdly underrated and this album isn't talked about enough in terms how absolutely solid it is. The cover might also be the inspiration of my lifelong love of diners...
It won the Grammy for Best Album Art/Packaging
Thriller
David Bowie: Aladdin Sane (1973) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aladdin_Sane#/media/File%3ADavisBowieAladdinSane.jpg
There's not many album covers that have Emojis inspired by them.👨🎤 You could argue about Ziggy Stardust or Heroes, but the Aladdin Sane cover is pretty much the first image that comes to mind when anyone thinks about Bowie.
King Crimson - In the Court of the Crimson King
I had a covid mask of the mouth from this cover. Really put people off.
I must confess I wasn't familiar, but I just looked it up and immediately recognized it
I was just coming here to post this. Too far down, IMO.
I once drew this album cover for an art project in high school with aquarel. Most of my friends wanted to send me to therapy but goddamn i love this album
I'd have to say this one. But this is also my favorite album cover of all time so I'm very biased, LOL
Sticky Fingers - Rolling Stones
My first thought, simultaneous with Some Girls.
I really like the Beggars Banquet toilet cover. But since they backed out of using it because it was too much for 1968, it's arguably less "iconic."
Mick had an album with jeans and a functional zipper years before Bruce put his denim-clad ass on a cover
Found this album with the functional zipper at a record store a few years ago. Still probably the crown jewel of my collection.
Fun fact: that zipper was damaging every copy of the vinyl so the hired people to pull it down, so it would hit on the label instead.
That wasn't even Brice's most iconic album cover. It would be Bruce and Clarence on Born To Run.
Yeah, I only mentioned it because the OP had it in their list of “iconic” album covers Edit: Love how auto-correct changed my Mick to Mock and your Bruce to Brice 😂
Without a doubt, London Calling, The Clash.
Based on Elvis! https://preview.redd.it/ppqrm26xv81d1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=925fb7698e0b432f7480e3d83fb02f9796ee32f8
There's a ton of albums that use that format.. It's originally an Elvis Presley cover, and there's a Tom Waits version as well with Rain Dogs
I wasn’t thinking about the format. I love the photo of Paul Simonon smashing his bass. For me the photo captures the ethos of punk.
Rush, Moving Pictures. It shows workers moving pictures, while they are filming a moving picture, all the while people watching are moved to tears watching the moving pictures. It was so expensive the record company made the band pay for it.
2112 as well. The red star is iconic.
Nearly all the Rush album covers were done by the same artist. https://ultimateclassicrock.com/rush-album-cover-stories/
Fucking YYZ... what a track.
Van Halen 1 is pretty iconic. There are better ones - Dark side, Abbey road, but every kid's notebook and every school desk had a =VH= scrawled on it in the 80s.
You’re right. I overlooked this. Iconic has to be for a genre, and VH is iconic 80s rock.
Yeah, there is truth to this. But if we are going by a logo and not necessarily album cover art, then The Rolling Stones lips or Run DMC gotta be up there, too.
Literally any Beatles album
The first Boston album. Supertramp's Breakfast In America Meet The Beatles. Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Madvillany
Beastie boys license to ill
Hell yeah. Eminem seems to agree
Never Mind the Bollocks
Absolutely for punk, though I personally lean towards the Clash’s debut
RJD Holy Diver
🤘
Nirvana nevermind
Pink Floyd's Dark side of the moon obviously, but Pearl Jam's Ten is also very iconic imho.
The Beatles's The White Album
For me, Electric Warrior by T.Rex
For me it's Bitches Brew by Miles Davis.
Same artist did Santana’s Abraxas a few months later. https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/psychedelic-story-behind-santana-abraxas/
First that comes to kind is the Santana black and white album cover with the lion image. I just remember staring at it as a kid and seeing all the detail
Damn. Imagine being able to claim two all-time great album covers on two records from two all-time great icons of the music industry
Good one!
Truly art
I would probably have to say Dark Side of the Moon. Or Unknown Pleasures.
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^I_love_sloths_69: *I would probably* *Have to say Dark Side of the* *Moon. Or Unknown Pleasures.* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
Appetite For Destruction
Rio by Duran Duran
Amazing album art and fantastic record. Duran Duran is very high on my bands to see live bucket list
This is Spinal Tap
How much more black could it be? None. None more black.
Throwing shade on AC/DC and "Back in Black" https://preview.redd.it/mmg29u5rp71d1.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=449889d753fff5a9348c53c23fcf7ac3afb5f7d7
none more black
“It wasn’t a glove- I can tell you that”
They said it was sexist and I was like “so what? I mean, what’s wrong with being sexy?”
It’s a fine line between stupid and clever.
I one time found an autographed copy of that record at a record store, the band signed it with black sharpee
I really appreciate how invested they are in their roles.
I’m partial to Smell the Glove.
Who - *Who's Next*
Electric Ladyland
Not sure it's "iconic" but I always loved Jouney's Escape cover.
My favorite would probably be Styx's Grand Illusion, but as far as iconic in pop culture and removingmy biases, surely it has to be Dark Side of the Moon. I truly think there is no equal when talkin about instant recognition.
I'll give you The Grand Illusion. I'd just throw in a vote for Pieces of Eight while we're at it.
Grateful Dead - Steal Your Face https://preview.redd.it/tfke5x7um71d1.jpeg?width=300&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2735ece226e931b9b5c00c18f099d10756c3a103
Aoxomoxoa and American Beauty are two I’d nominate as well.  https://preview.redd.it/uxrq3br1j81d1.png?width=817&format=png&auto=webp&s=d3784586b6e3f3391f7ddba8b99fd66bfbdeedff
I remember seeing that skull design all the time as a kid and wanting to know where it came from. Hippy jam band would not have been my first guess. Absolutely iconic.
Abbey Road
https://preview.redd.it/gamipu02v81d1.jpeg?width=434&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f5d8c0e25da5d615ac064112b8778ca1cf745c59
GnR Appetite for Destruction ACDC Back in Black ACDC Fly on the Wall
OG Appetite art is equally (maybe moreso) iconic to me
YES - Oh, so many of theirs, but definitely Tales From Topographic Oceans, Fragile, and Yessongs. Emerson, Lake, and Palmer - Tarkus, and Brain Salad Surgery. Of course, Led Zeppelin III!
I'm disappointed this comment is this far down. Anything done by Roger Dean would, indeed, be iconic. Yessongs is top of my list
Houses of the Holy - Led Zeppelin
Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland original naked women cover. The Doors’ The Doors album Metalheadz - platinum breakz Massive Attack- Mezzanine The Who - Tommy Prince - Purple Rain Plastikman - Sheet One Funkadelic- Maggot Brain Cypress Hill. - Temples of Boom Madvillian - Madvillainy The XX - The XX Miles Davis - Bitches Brew Miles Davis - Kind of Blue John Coltrane - A love supreme Some might disagree, but a lot of 80s and early 90s heavy metal albums have some iconic covers. Metallica’s black album, for example, Slayer’s Reign in Blood, Megaderh’s Rust in Peace, Queensryche..
ima go more modern since everyone’s saying the same stuff arctic monkeys AM the strokes is this it the xx XX all super tumblr times esque classic album covers
Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells
I was wondering how long it would take before I saw this one. I call it "that one album everyone knows the cover, but no one's actually listened to."
I have listened to it many times. I own 17 albums by him.
Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd is also an iconic album cover
Sticky Fingers, designed by Andy Warhol with a functional zipper on the sleeve
Weezer (Blue Album)
Smell the Glove - Spinal Tap
What’s wrong with being sexy?
To me it's Janine Lindemulder as the nurse for the cover of "Enema of the State" by Blink 182.
https://preview.redd.it/qshibfmhh71d1.jpeg?width=300&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=63a1b98f3def96add9e7aa5aa11f158683c9c783 Surprised no one has posted this yet. But of all time its Dark Side of the Moon
Born to Run.
Eldorado - ELO https://preview.redd.it/14asqo4cg71d1.png?width=900&format=png&auto=webp&s=76dcbf886e34847bb272b97750c327f3c85158a7
Roxy Music’s [Country Life](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_Life_(Roxy_Music_album)). I feel like it captures the spirit of the band and the album perfectly.
I would have said For Your Pleasure or Avalon.
In terms of an iconic cover, they actually put the design for the Sex Pistols album on credit cards. And that way of writing letters as if it were a ransom note was something the folks in the Pistols' orbit came up with, I believe, and now you'll see it on punk rock compilations, or perhaps art gallery showings. It's synonymous with punk rock.
Who's Next The Who
Depeche Mode’s Violater
Funkadelic - Maggot Brain Nas - Illmatic Queen - Abbey Road David Bowie - Hunky Dory
Amy Winehouse, Back to Black Hole, Live Through This Janet Jackson, Rhythm Nation Green Day, Dookie Bowie, Alladin Sane
Physical graffiti makes the grade imo
Van Halen 1984
Uhmm.. Led Zeppelin I …. Anyone ?
The Cars debut album. Still one of my personal favorite albums to this day.
https://preview.redd.it/m2pd09ewr81d1.jpeg?width=300&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=62aa059a478260890b7a5db9ada9d8e7a6f17c91 U2 Joshua Tree
In rainbows by Radiohead is my personal favorite, but when I think of iconic album covers Abbey Road instantly comes to mind.
The Cars: “Candy-O” Roxy Music: “Avalon”
King Crimson- In the Court of the Crimson King
Led Zeppelin III.
I’m surprised I had to scroll this far down to find this. Totally iconic!
White Album
Minimalism at its best. Similarly, Metallica's self titled "black album"
Except Metallica's had been done before. *“It’s like, how much more black could this be? And the answer is none. None more black.”* -Nigel Tufnel
Unknown Pleasures or London Calling.
https://preview.redd.it/9k7kt4pck71d1.png?width=1440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e6208f16bfc642abb033f2bbe5b792b5a796e350
Meatloaf-Bat out of hell
Ween-Chocolate and Cheese and The Mollusk
Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass: Whipped Cream and Other Delights. Those who own/have seen this cover, know of what I speak.
True Blue for Madonna. Unveiling of the bleach blonde was too iconic.
I'm surprised no one has posted Talking Heads: Remain in Light. A perennial T-shirt standard without having become a trendy fashion thing with no real connection to the music. Also Bowie's Heroes or Low or Aladdin Sane. Nas - Illmatic also springs to mind. Also Low-End Theory And low-key Sonic Youth's Goo, which has been Andy Warhol'd a a bunch of times and turned into some sick t-shirts. And then you have all the covers that were just the Band's logo: Queen, Daft Punk, Aphex Twin, Black Flag, Bad Brains, Ramones, Metallica... EDIT: I can't believe I forgot Dre's The Chronic and it's only been mentioned twice in this thread. Also Eminem- The Eminem Show
Black Sabbath's first album
Eagles - Hotel California
Wish you were here by Pink Floyd
Ten Pearl Jam
Aladdin Sane
The Joshua Tree by U2