Which album has the best cover?

Over time a lot of albums have been released, and on before the internet, your first impression was really based on the artwork on it. Some are real classics, like dark side of the moon, and some are real bummers.

What's your favourite?

American Football's self titled. Hands down.

For those with morbid fascinations, you can't get better than Mayhem's Dawn of the Black Hearts.

I don't know too many bands who would be willing to putting a picture of their own former singer's freshly (self)slain corpse on a bootleg.

Mittens95 said:

Spoiler:

American Football's self titled. Hands down.

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Man I was figuring out why the rest of the picture wouldn't load, haha. Very cleverly done, really like it.

CarcharOdin said:

For those with morbid fascinations, you can't get better than Mayhem's Dawn of the Black Hearts.

I don't know too many bands who would be willing to putting a picture of their own former singer's freshly (self)slain corpse on a bootleg.

Spoiler:

Click to expand...

Man, that's just crazy. I'm feeling sick looking at it. I don't think this kind of music is meant for me, haha.

Psylocke said:

personally for me it's a fight between Björk's Vespertine:

Spoiler:

and Kylie Minogue's Impossible Princess:

Spoiler:

I admire the complexity of Verpertine's and simplicity of Impossible Princess's equally. I think the colours work so well in both, both are really striking and alluring to me, much like the material contained on the albums they belong to

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I really like the Kylie Minoque's one. It's so simple and elegant.

Flume - Flume



I'm not usually very into the visual arts, but I really like this.

there are so many. the aforementioned American Football album has an absolutely stunning gatefold as well.



I'm Crying. I tend to like albums with grainy photographs as their covers, like a few Sun Kil Moon (last one technically isn't Sun Kil Moon, but an affiliated project) album covers. those are beautiful. but really there are hundreds of album covers that have caught my eye, it'd be too hard to list them all.

Despite never having actually listened to Vampire Weekend, I love the album cover for (I had to google this) Contra. Her ambiguous facial expression is, well, enticing. It almost makes me want to listen to Vampire Weekend. Almost.

I also find it interesting that the woman in the photo, Ann Kennis, sued the shit out of Vampire Weekend because they used the photo without consent. Just a little cherry on top.

I always loved this cover, my favourite album of all time.

animal collective's - spirit they're gone spirit they've vanished

Duty by Ayumi Hamasaki. What's not to like honestly.

Pink Floyd - Animals. I don't think it could ever be anything else for me. I know a lot of people that listened to this when they were younger because of the artwork alone, myself included. It fits perfectly with the music and the message. It's such a shit-stain building, I passed by it fairly often when I lived in London and it's even uglier in person.

This:

Modern Life is Rubbish by Blur, Ive never listened to it and I don't like Blur, but there is just something I like about the imagery how the title says modern life is rubbish and shows us a painting of a Express train in the 1940's (Its Mallard the Fasted steam train in the world) to show us what the "good old days" looked like (a least through rose tinted glasses).

I really love The Electric Lady by Janelle Monaé. Illustrated by Sam Spratt, it continues to build on the fictional world Janelle has created with her music. Musically, the album is just as brilliant with fantastic sounds, and lots of great social commentary and empowering messages in the lyrics. So it's probably one of my favorite recent albums in general. The cover is just the icing on the cake.

The first thing that sticks to mind when I think "good album art" will always be this:



There are also a few runner ups that I can think of.

It has to be between either the album cover for Rings Of Saturn - Lugal Ki En


Or

Excision - Shambhala 2010