#30. Melodrama, Lorde
Lorde is one of the very few artists who climbed to the top of the charts with her very first single, Royals. She became an instant star and won a Grammy for Song of The Year and Pop Solo Performance, as well as getting three other nominations.
Melodramatic was released in 2017 with a gorgeous cover that perfectly anticipates the songs in the album. The whole theme is teenage heartbreak, and the color blue and the strong shadows accentuate this feeling of heartbreak and loneliness.
#29. Dookie, Green Day
Green Day had released two albums before releasing Dookie, but this record was the one to really launch them into worldwide fame. The critically-acclaimed album is credited with making punk rock what it is today, and it earned the band their first Grammy.
After he heard the record, all designer Richie Bucher could think about was an explosion, and that's how the cover was born. Indeed, listening to the album sounds like an explosion going off in your head, but in the best way possible.
#28. Enema Of The State, Blink-182
The rise of pop punk in the early 2000s had much to do with Blink-182. The band slowly became mainstream and with the release of Enema of the State in 1999, they became legendary.
To bring the title of the album to a quite literal level, we see a sexy nurse putting on a rubber glove, clearly insinuating the kind of procedure she is about to perform. This image was engraved in people's heads from the very beginning and quite frankly, it still is.
#27. Master Of Puppets, Metallica
As evidenced by the genius cover of Master of Puppets, one of their best albums, Metallica loves some good-old social commentary. The cover shows a cemetery filled with crosses on strings, held by a mysterious pair of hands in the red sky.
This image symbolizes soldiers who go to war and die for the interests of the rich, while their identities are forgotten. Back then, this was a very bold statement to make, and it was heard loud and clear.
#26. The Fame Monster, Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga's style has changed a lot, but back when she started, she was all about being the center of attention. She would wear the craziest outfits, but the cover of her iconic album The Fame Monster was perfectly simplistic.
Gaga is seen in black and white, wearing a leather coat and a white wig. The theme of the album is to show the dark side of fame and success, which is why she is wearing black and why it is in black and white.
#25. Jeffery, Young Thug
The rap world has been historically dominated by straight, manly men, and anyone who did not fit in that category has a hard time making it. While nowadays the genre is more open, there is still a lot of pressure on artists to conform to these unspoken rules.
This is why it was a breath of fresh air to see Young Thug defying those expectations on the cover of Jeffery, where he is seen wearing a purple dress in a delicate pose. This kind of cover would have been unthinkable a couple of decades earlier.
#24. 1989, Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift was already popular in both the country and the pop scene when 1989 came out, but the immediate success of the album was completely unexpected. In a time when pop music was not doing so well, Swift released an album that basically revived the genre.
The clever cover featured Swift's face cut off in a Polaroid photo, which evoked memories from the '80s, and 1989 is the year she was born. Even though the cover is retro, the sound is completely modern.
#23. Elvis Presley, Elvis Presley
Elvis was one of the crucial figures of the rise of rock and roll in the '50s. Released in 1956, his debut studio album was the first rock and roll album to sell a million copies, and it spent ten weeks at the top of the Billboard chart.
Such a landmark LP just had to have the appropriate cover and this shot that captures Elvis in all his glory during one of his energetic and controversial live performances was a perfect choice.
#22. Ummagumma, Pink Floyd
Ummagumma is just one of Pink Floyd's many albums with eccentric and artsy covers. Most of their albums from the '60s had a psychedelic cover that perfectly fitted their early sound.
This is exactly the case of Ummagumma. For this trippy design, they used a Droste effect that shows the group with smaller and smaller pictures of the same scene, but with the members changing places in each of the frames.
#21. Rumours, Fleetwood Mac
When Fleetoow Mac decided to record a pop/soft-rock album that would heighten the acclaim they had garnered for their previous effort, they couldn't have imagined that Rumours would end up selling 40 million copies worldwide.
The cover seems simple, but there are a few special details in it.Stevie Nicks is in character as Rhiannon, the Welsh witch from their classic song, and the wooden balls hanging from Mick Fleetwood's pants were a lucky charm for him and he always kept them with him during shows.
#20. The Velvet Underground & Nico, The Velvet Underground & Nico
Pop art pioneer Andy Warhol is known not only for his amazing work but for his collaborations with other artists as well. There was a time when he became the manager of the experimental rock band The Velvet Underground.
The band released one of the most influential albums ever along with singer Nico. Warhol designed the edgy cover, with a banana peel that said: "Peel Slowly And See". This was actually a sticker that, if taken off, showed a flesh-colored banana underneath.
#19. Purple Rain, Prince
I Would Die 4 U, one of Prince's singles from his massive breakthrough album (and movie) Purple Rain, says: "I'm not a woman, I'm not a man. I am something you'll never understand."
Prince's androgynous figure has always been intriguingly surrounded by mystery. This enigmatic presence of his is perfectly portrayed in this awesome cover, which shows him smirking on his purple motorcycle, ready to disappear between the darkness and smoke.
#18. Melon Collie And The Infinite Sadness, The Smashing Pumpkins
Melon Collie And The Infinite Sadness is one of the The Smashing Pumpkins' most iconic covers. This ambitious double album was released in 1995 and features 28 songs.
Illustrator John Craig made this fantastic composite image by taking the background from a children's book, the woman's eye-rolling face from an 18th Century painting by Jean-Baptiste Greuze, and the body from a painting by Raphael.
#17. All Eyez On Me, 2Pac
The first double hip-hop album to be released globally,All Eyez On Me made history for its chart-topping success and for being 2Pac's last release before he died. The songs show 2Pac at his most paranoid, aggressive and lonely side.
Practically the opposite of his previous album's cover, this one shows him defiant, showing the Death Row pendant to announce his partnership with the infamous label, and the W-shaped sign to intimidate his East-Coast rivals.
#16. The Dark Side Of The Moon, Pink Floyd
One of the world's most recognizable album covers belongs to one of the best selling and most legendary albums, Pink Floyd's The Dark Side Of The Moon. The artwork was created by Hipgnosis, a design team that often collaborated with the band.
The three elements (light beam, prism, and refracted spectrum) allegedly stand for three facets of Floyd: their stunning stage lighting, the album's lyrics, and the keyboardist's demand to design something simple yet bold.
#15. Aladdin Sane, David Bowie
David Bowie left this planet in 2016, and his outstanding farewell album,Blackstar, was released only two days prior to the sad day. That album's straightforward yet unforgettable cover was one of many of his records' designs that left a mark in history.
But the most memorable cover was that of Aladdin Sane, where we got to see his alternate persona, Ziggy Stardust, come to life. Ziggy is lively and electric and has a lighting bolt across his face, and this look became more than iconic.
#14. Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles
The idea for the incredible Sgt Pepper's cover was created by Paul McCartney, who made a lot of drawings of The Beatles looking like a brass band and surrounded by friends and other icons.
Once they agreed on the idea of making a surreal collage, each Beatle got to choose some historical men and women they wanted to appear with. There are 57 photographs in total, including Marilyn Monroe, Bob Dylan, Karl Marx, and Marlon Brando. How many can you recognize?
#13. Born In The USA, Bruce Springsteen
The artwork for Sgt Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band was actually the most expensive one to ever be produced at the time. However, a flamboyant concept isn't always required for an LP's cover to become legendary.
Take this Bruce Springsteen record, for instance. A simple photograph, inspired by Born In The USA's title track, merely shows Bruce in blue, white and red, before a part of the American flag.
#12. Loveless, My Bloody Valentine
Loveless is indisputably one of the most influential records of the '90s, and its cover certainly helped its popularity. At first sight it looks confusing, right?
The bright pink picture shows an electric guitar that is extremely distorted and obscured, which reflects the whole theme and vibe of the album.
#11. Meat Is Murder, The Smiths
The cover of Meat Is Murder, The Smith's second LP, is certainly legendary. The image shows a 20-year-old Vietnam war soldier called Michael Wynn. The soldier, as a matter of fact, had "make war not love" written on his helmet, which turned the hippie movement's pacifist phrase upside down.
Morrisey, the band's singer, is vegan, and he tried to trace a parallel between war and meat-eating by putting the album's title as the phrase on the helmet. Just as the soldier was making a statement, the band also is.
#10. The Low End Theory, A Tribe Called Quest
Even if you haven't listened to A Tribe Called Quest, this cover will definitely ring a bell if you know a bit about rap. For their breakthrough record, the group chose an exquisite combination of jazz samples, explosive wordplay, and sharp social commentary.
The legendary image features a kneeling nude woman, painted with bold, Afrocentric colors. The painted lady would then become an immediately recognizable symbol of the group, appearing on following releases and posters.
#9. Things Fall Apart, The Roots
The younger public now knows The Roots as the backing band at Jimmy Fallon's late-night show, but they made history as one of the first hip-hop bands to ever use live musical instruments.
Perhaps the most celebrated record of the jazz-rap trailblazers is Things Fall Apart, from 1999. The cover is a photograph from a riot of the Civil Rights Movement Era that shows two women being chased by the police in the streets of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.
#8. Abbey Road, The Beatles
Ironically, The Beatles' first cover that didn't feature the album's name became its most recognizable one. Yes, the fact that the fab-four made some of their best music for Abbey Road probably helped, but the photo is legendary on its own.
On the morning of the 8th of August of 1969, photographer Iain Macmillan only had ten minutes to take the shot. He took six pictures with the help of a policeman who held the traffic, and Paul McCartney (who's barefoot in the photo) closely analyzed each and one of the images before choosing the one which would be imitated by everyone from then onwards.
#7. Horses, Patti Smith
A poet, musician, singer, songwriter, and feminist activist, Patti Smith began her artistic career by releasing some of the earliest and most expressive punk records of the '70s.
Her debut, Horses, from 1975, mixed sharp, beat-influenced lyrics with the sound of the blossoming New York punk scene. The black and white iconic photograph of the influential album's cover was taken by no other than Robert Mapplethorpe.
#6. Illmatic, Nas
Arguably the best debut album in hip-hop and one of the best across all genres,Illmatic immortalized Nas' harsh stories about his experiences in the streets of Queens. The narratives unfolded on each song takes the listener through an incredible adventure.
The iconic cover of one of the East Coast's seminal rap albums of the '90s shows a picture of a 7-year-old Nas that's superimposed over one of the streets of his native Queen's housing projects.
#5. Maggot Brain, Funkadelic
Released in 1971 and listed at number 486 on Rolling Stone's 500 greatest albums of all time, Maggot Brain is one of funk rock's classics. And who else but Funkadelic could have had achieved such a feat?
Along with their sister act, Parliament, the band laid the foundations of the funk-rock sound during the '70s. In the stunning cover, we can see model Barbara Cheeseborough buried up to her neck.
#4. London Calling, The Clash
Does this one remind you of something? That's right, the font and the letters' colors are a homage to Elvis' debut. But even though Elvis' photo was nothing short of wild, the scene of this Clash concert is on a whole other level.
Who's smashing his instrument on stage? That would be bassist Paul Simonon. This was no gimmick, though, he destroyed the bass out of frustration because security wouldn't let the fans stand up from their seats!
#3. Nevermind, Nirvana
Nevermind is probably the most iconic cover of the '90s. Most people think that the artwork of Nirvana's breakthrough record that would famously end up knocking Michael Jackson out of the #1 spot constitutes a clever example of social commentary.
A baby chasing a dollar bill on a string - the mocking of capitalism's values is pretty obvious, but Kurt Cobain loved the concept for a lesser-known thing. Story goes that Kurt was captivated by a documentary about underwater birth, and that's why he went with the swimming baby.
#2. To Pimp A Butterfly, Kendrick Lamar
In 2015, Kendrick Lamar, released what's arguably the best album of the decade. To Pimp A Butterfly's complex, dense, and theatrical lyrics touch on America's contemporary racial issues, Kendrick's personal struggle with depression and power, institutional discrimination, and other themes.
The instantaneously legendary cover shows K-Dot and some of his longtime friends from Compton (and their children), in a defiant and celebratory pose, in front of the White House, with a judge on the floor.
#1. Unknown Pleasures, Joy Division
Joy Division released only two albums, but this was more than enough to establish the band as one of goth-rock and post-punk's seminal acts. Thanks to Ian Curtis' bass-baritone vocals, his utterly bleak lyrics, and the unconventional production techniques, Unknown Pleasures; music conveys a gloomy atmosphere like no other record.
The greatest merit of the famous cover is that its iconic radio waves over a black background anticipate the urgent darkness and the heavy bass of the band's music. Since then, the image has become a pop-culture phenomenon, with thousands of people wearing Unknown Pleasures t-shirts.