Pepper album cover remains a pop art masterpiece that has influenced everyone from Frank Zappa ( We’re Only In It For The Money) to The Simpsons ( The Yellow Album). But the most important and, at the time the most expensive album cover ever made, the Sgt. The Beatles, of course, had plenty of iconic album covers in their career, including Abbey Road and The White Album. The Beatles: Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) Two decades later, The Clash and photographer Pennie Smith felt there was still none more rock’n’roll, and nicked the idea for the epochal London Calling vinyl album cover. Caught playing the guitar and singing during a performance at the Fort Homer Hesterly Armory, Tampa, Florida, on July 31, 1955, you can still feel the primal rock’n’roll energy from a young man ready to take over the world.
Two simple words: “Elvis” and “Presley” (the latter barely hiding that controversial pelvis from view): that’s all it needed to say. While you’re reading, listen to our Greatest Album Covers playlist here. Our list of the 25 most iconic album covers of all time may not be exhaustive, but it certainly reveals why album covers deserve to be held in as high a regard as more traditional modes of artwork. While art might be a matter of taste, lasting legacy is something that’s more easily measured. The best album covers see these graphic designs bypass linear thinking and emerge with an image that is a bona fide work of art in its own right. Andy Warhol, meanwhile, dreamed up The Rolling Stones’ iconic blue jeans crotch and zipper on Sticky Fingers. Peter Saville made Factory Records a sensation with the radio waves of Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures (and many more). The firm Hipgnosis defined the 70s with their many optical illusions. Other iconic album covers are envisioned by creative masterminds. Sometimes album covers are helped on their way to iconic status because of the musicians they feature: photogenic stars, such as Elvis Presley, David Bowie, or Prince, whose godlike images are burned into our retinas. Sometimes they do all three: what is The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club album cover, if not the ultimate manifestation of 60s psychedelia for the “peace and love” crowd? That alone is enough to consider Blond(e)d a triumph, however the hell you spell it.Įxperience the music behind Frank Ocean’s Blonde album covers on iTunes or stream it via Apple Music today.Truly iconic album covers don’t just define an album, they define an era, a generation, and, in some cases, an entire musical genre.
He’s more than the voice of a generation at this point he’s the artist that your favorite rappers and musicians are trying to keep up with, even after a four year hiatus. Like so many things about this release, he’s chosen the method of delivery most likely to be indigestible by the giant sorting, tagging and archiving stomach of the internet–while simultaneously making aware of our place in the belly of the beast.īut then again, this is Frank “The Enigma” Ocean we’re talking about. At the same time by releasing multiple spellings with graphics that contradict or vary from the official title used by streaming services, Ocean seems to be intentionally messing with us. There is surely some method to the madness when one considers the way the spelling and typographical choices play off gendered constructions, echoing the projects visual and musical themes…”blond” being masculine, “blonde” being feminine and “blonded” being what all of us are in a post-August 20th, 2016 world. Our guess? the Blond puzzle, seeped in matters of identity, sexuality and non-normative gender roles, is meant to break both the internet and the antiquated lexicon used to describe not just music, but a person’s identity within and without it. Maybe it’s Kanye levels of misdirection, maybe it’s another brilliant ploy to keep us neck-deep in the book and not wonder what Frank Ocean’s got coming next for another four years. After all, why choose one cover when the internet lets you have all the versions you like (and a ‘zine and a film and…and…)īut given the level of artistic care and sheer effort that have gone into the whole complex of creative material released around Blond(e)d we believe there’s something else at work. Now, it’s easy to chalk this up to last-minute alterations in the mad-dash to this massive, multi-layered roll-out, or to dismiss it as artistic indecision. Three distinctive versions of the album’s cover pop up on the ripped CD, all with their own stylistic take on the album’s name: Blonde, Blond and Blonded.
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