Top Hits: The Most Iconic Album Covers of All Time

Some music artists have stood the test of time for more than their soulful tunes. These are some of the world’s most iconic album covers ever!

Every year, the universally-known Grammy awards chose one album that stands out from others because of the cover’s artwork and design.

That alone shows how important the cover graphics of an album can be.

But even more than that: there are albums we all know just from looking at their cover. Even if we don’t really know the songs! And that’s exactly what makes iconic album covers.

Don’t know exactly what we’re talking about? The next four albums will definitely ring a bell.

4 Iconic Album Covers

If you’re a musician and you have an idea of unique artwork, you too can make your own awesome album cover.

Nowadays, all you really need is a good tool and our suggestion for you is Adobe’s Spark’s album cover. And don’t worry, you don’t need to have any design skills at all!

Aladdin Sane – David Bowie

When your album cover becomes one of the most recognizable looks in your entire career, you know it is nothing less than iconic. And who doesn’t recognize the red mullet and the orange and blue lightning bolt in David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane?

Definitely Maybe – Oasis

Initially, Oasis had a specific idea for this album cover: it would be a photo of the band sitting at the dining table in the guitarist’s home.

However, the photographer didn’t love the idea and instead suggested they took photos at the guitarist’s living room, along with personal objects of their choice. The big star of the cover ended up being the spinning inflatable globe and the album became indeed worldwide-known.

Things Fall Apart – The Roots

For a while, this album had five different covers, which already differentiated it from many others. But one of the covers stood out even more because of the story that it portrayed.

This cover was a photo of frightened two black teens running away from the riot police during a Civil Rights Movement. It’s not hard to understand why this became such an emblematic cover: once you see the fear in the woman’s face, it’s quite impossible to forget it.

Abbey Road – The Beatles

How many times has Abbey Road’s album cover been used as inspiration? For other albums, cartoon posters, tv shows… the image of the Beatles walking on a crosswalk one after the other is probably the pinnacle of iconic album covers!

When an Album Is About More Than the Music

The songs are usually what make an album become timeless, but if you ask us what the second most important thing is we’d definitely say the album cover.

Musicians get to collaborate with other artists and make their cover a timeless piece of art on its own. And the four covers we listed in this article are perfect examples of that. You recognized all of them, didn’t you?

But there are many, many more than just these four. If we wanted to list all the iconic album covers, this article would be endless.

Which one’s your favorite? Let us know in the comments below!