Album Art-The Stories Behind Music's Iconic Album Covers
Album Art-The Stories Behind Music's Iconic Album Covers-takes a deep dive into the history of iconic album cover art. Images and additional information on Rolling Stones albums may be found at https://iorr.org/albums/. Find album art images at discogs.com by searching the album title. Look for a new episode each Friday.
Episodes
160 episodes
Golliwog--billy woods | The Story Behind the Album Cover Art
This album cover drops a deeply racist caricature into a quiet patch of woods and dares you to look away. It’s not playful. It’s not ironic. It’s a confrontation—one rooted in Victorian children’s books, minstrel imagery, and a slur that drifte...
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40:46
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Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely--Frank Sinatra | The Story Behind the Album Cover Art
This album won the first Grammy for best album cover--a painted face, half in shadow. A red clown’s nose. One restrained tear. This episode is about how Frank Sinatra turned private devastation into controlled art. We unpack the sad-clown...
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41:09
Hotel California--The Eagles | The Story Behind the Album Cover Art
They perched on a cherry picker over Sunset Boulevard at rush hour, chasing a sliver of dying daylight to photograph a hotel you weren’t even supposed to see from the street. That alone should tell you Hotel California was never going ...
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40:07
In the Right Place--Dr. John | The Story Behind the Album Cover Art
A sun that eats planets. A hippie demigod on a moon throne. Winged dogs chasing nursery-rhyme fugitives. And yes—two cupcake bottoms staring straight back at you. Dr. John’s In the Right Place isn’t just an album cover; it’s a ps...
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31:44
Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap--AC/DC | The Story Behind the Album Cover Art
What happens when a band known for raw, straight-ahead rock hands a surrealist design outfit a title borrowed from a cartoon villain? You get a cover that looks like a crime scene assembled by people who weren’t entirely sure what crimes actual...
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33:25
Absolutely Do Not Lick This Album-The Pom Poms | The Story Behind the Album Cover Art
What do you get when four Wyoming college kids mix Moog synthesizers, LSD blotter paper, a vending machine that hasn’t stocked Pom Poms since 1959, and a design studio they made up on the spot? You get the only album in history that sparked cam...
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44:27
Born to Run--Bruce Springsteen | The Story Behind the Album Cover Art
A scribbled phrase. A wooden crate. A shy kid from Jersey and a sax man with a fedora. In two hours and just 600 photographs, they created one of the most recognizable images in rock history—Bruce leaning into Clarence, the sound and soul...
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40:23
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Brain Salad Surgery--Emerson, Lake, and Palmer | The Story Behind the Album Cover Art
It’s part cathedral, part nightmare—a human face trapped in alien machinery, born from the mind of the man who would create Alien. Emerson, Lake & Palmer wanted shock value; H.R. Giger gave them something eternal. What began ...
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Season 3
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Episode 150
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42:53
Virgin Killer--Scorpions | The Story Behind the Album Cover Art
The Scorpions’ Virgin Killer didn’t just cross the line—it set it on fire. A ten-year-old model, a cracked-glass cover, and a title that dared you to look away. The band said it was “about time as the killer of innocence.” Critics call...
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Season 3
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Episode 149
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32:21
Cut--The Slits | The Story Behind the Album Cover Art
When you name your band The Slits, you’ve already kicked the door in. But when you strip down, smear on mud, and glare into the camera for your debut album Cut, you’ve declared war on the male gaze itself. The Slits said it wa...
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Season 3
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Episode 148
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39:09
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Alice's Restaurant--Arlo Guthrie | The Story Behind the Album Cover Art
Who knew that an empty plate, a bowler hat, and a naked twenty-year-old could rewrite Thanksgiving in America? Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant cover looks like a joke—and it is—but it’s also a generational x-ray: Rockwell’s perfect t...
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39:38
Toys in the Attic--Aerosmith | The Story Behind the Album Cover Art
A teddy bear with a spyglass, a frog in oversized shoes, and an attic full of secrets—on this cover Aerosmith turns childhood whimsy into absolute creepy. From cocaine-fueled brainstorms at the Riot House to Ingrid Haenke’s uncanny illust...
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Season 3
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Episode 147
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46:29
The Singing Nun--Soeur Sourire | The Story Behind the Album Cover Art
A Belgian nun with a guitar, a convent storybook that was mostly fiction, and a song so pure it pushed Elvis and Motown off the charts—until four lads from Liverpool showed up. Dominique made Sister Smile an unlikely global star, but t...
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Season 3
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Episode 146
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51:46
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Layla and Assorted Love Songs--Derek and the Dominoes | The Story Behind the Album Cover Art
This is an album inspired by a Persian love tragedy that makes Romeo and Juliet read like a sitcom. It resonated with the unrequited love of a slow-handed rock guitar god in love with the wife of his Beatles bestie. The painting on the cover wa...
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Season 3
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Episode 145
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44:22
The Original Monster Mash--Bobby "Boris" Picket and the Crypt Kickers | The Story Behind the Album Cover Art
It took two hours, a $300 studio bill, and a Boris Karloff impression to make a Halloween song that just won’t die. From Hollywood wannabes to a bubbling beaker of sound effects, The Original Monster Mash rose from the lab in 196...
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Season 3
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Episode 144
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42:27
Forever Changes--Love | The Story Behind the Album Cover Art
A psychedelic heart shaped like Africa, stitched together from five fractured faces, became the symbol of a 60s album that may have inadvertently launched the Doors. Forever Changes was Love at their breaking point—poetry tangled with ...
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Season 3
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Episode 143
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41:29
Crack the Skye--Mastodon | The Story Behind the Album Cover Art
What do a Russian mystic, astral travel, and a teenage tragedy have in common? Mastodon’s Crack the Skye. Behind the energy-enfused face of Rasputin on the cover is a story of grief, transcendence, and cosmic odyssey — a record that cr...
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Season 3
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Episode 142
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47:00
Brothers in Arms--Dire Straits | The Story Behind the Album Cover Art
Raise your hand if you know the first album to sell a million CDs and outsell its vinyl twin. Okay, hands down—it was Brothers in Arms. But the cover? That dreamy blue sky with a floating steel guitar wasn’t planned at all. A jazz phot...
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Season 3
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Episode 141
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36:57
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Frankenchrist--Dead Kennedys | The Story Behind the Album Cover Art
Who could be offended by a bunch of old white guys driving miniature cars in a 4th of July parade on an album cover? Nobody, right? So, how did this album end up with criminal charges for its art and a $45 million lawsuit by some of the guys on...
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Season 3
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Episode 140
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49:41
The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan--Bob Dylan | The Story Behind the Album Cover Art
Two kids in love, freezing their butts off in Greenwich Village, accidentally make one of the most famous album covers of all time. Bob’s grinning, Suze is clinging, and Columbia Records is loving every snow-slushed step of it. One roll o...
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Season 3
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Episode 139
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33:03
Metamorphosis & Made in the Shade-The Rolling Stones | The Story Behind the Album Cover Art
What do you get when two Rolling Stones compilation albums go head-to-head—both released within days of each other, both claiming the band’s legacy, and neither fully endorsed by the band itself? Metamorphosis may be the weirdest Rolli...
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Season 3
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Episode 138
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40:39
Straight Outta Compton--N.W.A. | The Story Behind the Album Cover Art
A busted alley. A borrowed gun. A camera pointed skyward at six young men who were about to scare the hell out of America. No budget, no entourage, no Hipgnosis, no Photoshop—just a raw shoot that captured the exact moment gangsta rap was born....
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Season 3
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Episode 137
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29:54
The Best of the Lovin' Spoonful--Lovin' Spoonful | The Story Behind the Album Cover Art
Three rock stars walk into a Baltimore pharmacy looking for a soda fountain goddess. No, it's not a setup for a joke—it’s how The Best of the Lovin’ Spoonful got burned into my teenage brain. The cover’s all charm, the band’s all...
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Season 3
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Episode 136
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32:11
Killers--Iron Maiden | The Story Behind the Album Cover Art
Meet Eddie: punk-born, axe-wielding, and metal to the bone. On Iron Maiden’s Killers, the band’s infamous mascot came into his own—bloody, maniacal, and unforgettable. But Eddie didn’t start on a cover—he started as a joke… and a mask…...
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Season 3
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Episode 135
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41:47
Aoxomoxoa--Grateful Dead | The Story Behind the Album Cover Art
A poster too psychedelic for Hawaii, a cover that might say "We Ate the Acid," and a bunny with a secret. Aoxomoxoa is the Grateful Dead at their weirdest—and possibly their most biologically symbolic. Rick Griffin’s trippy vision gave...
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Season 3
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Episode 134
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33:16
