Top Five Album Covers

I finally sold off my record player and all my vinyl in 2001. I was in love with the 12" format for its art and I just couldn't let go. Here are my favourite album covers of all-time as determined by how I feel right now today. It's not rocket science!



1. Weasels Ripped My Flesh: The Mothers Of Invention (1970).
This is a Frank Zappa record. I like it because, no matter what the hero or damsel says in a Roy Lichtenstein painting, the art usually shows a mundane scene from a 1950s romance comic. Here, the man's razor has turned into a vicious animal and is cutting up his face. The man's smiling and making a silly razor noise. And there are too many word balloons. It's so surreal I don't have the analytical capability to fault it. Zappa also gets honorable mention for We're Only In It For The Money, which parodies the Beatles' famous Sgt. Pepper cover.

2. Led Zeppelin III (1970).
I kept a few records for sentimental reasons, and this is one. It has a gatefold sleeve but only one disc, so they put something unusual in the front space: a cardboard wheel! It's attached at the centre and you can rotate it so that different pieces of the wheel show through cut-out spaces on the front. Tactile things are good. The band's fourth album didn't have a title at all, just four symbols on the back; Physical Grafitti again made use of die-cutting in sixteen windows that each reveal one letter of the album's name on the inner record sleeve; and In Through The Out Door had several collectable covers and came in a sealed brown paper bag so you didn't know which one you were buying.

3. Tigermilk: Belle & Sebastian (1996).
Oh, to be a plush tiger! Other good records with boobs on include Jimi Hendrix's Electric Ladyland, Roxy Music's Country Life, Pixies' Surfer Rosa and, unsurprisingly, Pulp's This Is Hardcore.

4. Different Class: Pulp (1995).
Another one I kept, because the cover is a cut-out frame. Inside you get a total of 12 full-size card images - all potential album covers. Choice is good.

5. Parallel Lines: Blondie (1978).
She's all in white except for a splash of black in her hair. They're all in black suits and ties, except for white shirts - like proto-Reservoir Dogs. The background is stark vertical black and white stripes. Punk is in full swing and Blondie wants you to choose a smarter, better-dressed way of life.



They may not have cracked the top five, but I nevertheless have special affection for British labels 4AD and Warp Records. The linked galleries show how each company uses a visual style to brand their releases above and beyond which artist appears on a record (though dip into each archive halfway through to skip the chaff).