Iconic album covers. What’s your favourite?

If you like Roger Deans artwork what about this one from Rodney Mathews

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Eloy - Time To Turn

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I suspect that fractions of an ounce rather than pints were the units.

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Great Car !!!

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Beautiful concert hall!

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@pbode Now that a great Album

@JR007 Great Cover and Great Album

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Led Zeppelin’s In Through The Out Door by Storm Thorgerson. Here are three of the six variations that were available when it was released. Of course it was in a plain paper bag, so you had no idea which one you had.

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Conspicuous by its absence, and undeniably iconic:

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It’s very telling isn’t it. Not a single album from the last 20/30 years. I don’t mean that as an insult to the last few decades. Mote that people revert to “its old. It sold a lot. I liked it at a specific point in my life.”

Again, nothing wrong with that but the last 30 years have produced some superb covers that would be “iconic” regardless of their status in the place of things or our lives.

Elsewhere @anon39073561 ponders on the demographic of this forum getting younger. I suspect not. People just hide and wait for threads like this :slight_smile:

With the advent of the Compact Disc the album cover art has been an afterthought and in a lot of cases not thought about at all. Let’s just stick a photo of the artist on the cover that will do. In days gone by the artwork was just as important as the music. How many of us bought an album because of the artwork alone and found a whole new avenue to explore. In this case size does matter.

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To me an iconic album cover is not about whether it sold a lot, or whether I bought it, or even whether I like the music, but about the cover itself - the imagery, the fact that it stands out, either grabs or intrigues the viewer, and is remembered for itself (i.e as an album cover).

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I never bought purely on the basis of the artwork - but it was very often what led me to listen, discovering something new, and if I liked then buying. A typical Saturday morning in my late teens was spent going to one or more -often all - of the three local record stores, browsing for anything new that caught my eye, asking to hear. Sometimes I’d try maybe half a dozen or more and, and reject all, other times I’d find a gem. But that was it, catching my eye. That is how I discovered probably half of the bands/artists in my collection in the early years.

(N.B your avatar could count as an iconic cover, though possibly not the most well known.)

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Tricky this, as like music taste always changing (luckily) image

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https://jamesmarsh.com/prints/

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I think a lot of it is to do with the artwork on vinyl albums which were bought more before the arrival of cd and of course streaming. Even a lot of vinyl bought now are reissues but hopefully we will see more recent examples

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Here are three contemporary Album covers using the photographs of Stephan Vanfleteren, a fantastic photographer. Top one is Blackened Cities by Melanie De Biasio (Stunning single track album) Middle one is Never Enough by Roland Van Campenhout (Belgian blues!) and the bottom one is Mass VI by Amenra.

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Bonny light horseman. 2020 album. It’s a great album but it was constantly seeing this striking cover on the forum that made me listen to it.

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As Brian Eno is a favourite of mine here’s a classic album and cover…

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