The greatest album covers of all time

A beam of white light splitting into a spectrum through a glass prism, on plain black. Designed by Hipgnosis, it may be the most reproduced image in rock history — clean, scientific and readable at any size.

Hip-hop's “a picture worth a thousand words.” A photograph of a seven-year-old Nas — taken by his jazz-musician father, Olu Dara — floats over the Queensbridge projects that raised him. Childhood superimposed on the streets it grew up on.

Four men on a zebra crossing outside their studio, shot in ten minutes one August morning. No title, no band name — none was needed. It launched a million tourist photos at the same spot.

Jackson reclining in a white suit — borrowed on the day from photographer Dick Zimmerman — against soft black. Effortless, glamorous and endlessly imitated: the face of the best-selling album in history.

A naked baby swimming after a dollar bill on a fish-hook. Funny, unsettling, and a perfect visual joke about the music industry — the defining image of the grunge era.

An afro-haired baby in a diaper against stark white, the title in plain black above. Designed by Cey Adams, the contrast of infant innocence and that brutal title became one of the most recognised images in all of hip-hop.

Andy Warhol's banana, originally a peel-back sticker revealing a pink fruit beneath. Pop art and rock and roll on one sleeve — as influential as anything inside.

Mati Klarwein's surreal gatefold painting — a burning flower, a stormy sky, two faces split black and white at the shore. Jazz album art at its most ambitious, matching the music's plunge into the unknown.

A stack of white radio waves from a dying star, set on black — actually a pulsar's signal, redrawn by Peter Saville. Abstract, scientific and endlessly bootlegged onto t-shirts.

Two chrome robot helmets glinting against deep black — the only faces the duo ever showed. Minimal, futuristic, and the definitive image of pop's most mysterious act.

A crowd of cardboard cut-outs — dozens of famous faces gathered behind the band in costume. A collage you can study for hours, and the moment the album cover became fine art.

A lurid George Condo painting of the artist pinned beneath a winged phoenix — so provocative that several retailers refused to stock it. Few covers match the maximalist ambition of the music behind them this exactly.

Bowie's face split by a red-and-blue lightning bolt, a single tear pooling at his collarbone. The most glamorous — and most imitated — portrait of the glam era.

A Wolfgang Tillmans photograph of Ocean, head bowed under green light, hand over his face, in a shower. Quiet, intimate and half-hidden — the perfect image for the decade's most elusive album.

A screaming face, mouth and eyes wide in terror, filling the whole frame. Painted by Barry Godber, it's one of the most arresting images in all of progressive rock.

A rain-flecked close-up of Gaye in a black coat, collar turned up, gazing into the middle distance. Soul music turning serious — and looking it.

A close-up of denim jeans with a real, working zipper, designed by Andy Warhol. Provocative, tactile and pure Stones.

Shot from the ground looking up, the group glaring down as Eazy-E points a pistol straight at the viewer. Reality rap announced with an image as confrontational as the record.

A bassist smashing his instrument on a New York stage in grainy black and white, the pink-and-green lettering lifted straight from Elvis's debut. Punk energy frozen mid-swing.

Derek Riggs's mascot Eddie looming over a hellscape, working the Devil like a puppet — who in turn works a smaller human below. The painting that made Eddie metal's most famous face.

A white t-shirt, blue jeans and a red cap against the stars and stripes. Plain, working-class Americana that became one of the most recognisable sleeves of the 1980s.

A grinning, bloodied, bandaged face under sickly red light — the payoff of a story the artist played out across a whole era. Lurid, cinematic and impossible to forget.

Robert Mapplethorpe's stark black-and-white portrait — Smith in a white shirt, jacket slung over one shoulder, staring you down. A photograph that rewrote how a rock star could look.

Hill's face carved like a woodcut into a worn wooden school desk, all warm browns and scratched grain. A cover that turns the album's title into a single, literal image.

The Hindenburg airship bursting into flame, in stark black and white. Disaster as branding — a fitting overture for the heaviest band of their day.

Gold-standard in the most literal sense: the duo draped in thick gold chains and rings against a cash-green backdrop. The look that defined late-'80s rap luxury, and a thousand imitations since.

The band's faces masked in blocks of red digital paint — one of the earliest album covers built on a computer. Cold, modern and quietly unsettling.

Jamie Hewlett's hand-drawn portraits of the band's four cartoon members in a darkened grid — a direct nod to the Beatles' Let It Be sleeve. Animated characters made as iconic as any real band.

An inflatable pig floating between the chimneys of Battersea Power Station. The real balloon broke loose during the shoot and drifted into Heathrow's flight path — the story is as good as the image.

Stanley Donwood's jagged, blood-red mountain range, scratched and smeared like a frozen warning. Abstract menace that matched the music's chilly unease.

Klaus Voormann's pen-and-ink collage of the band's faces, woven through with tiny photographs. Hand-drawn, intricate, and a hard left turn from anything before it.

A riot of fluorescent psychedelia — collaged photos, day-glo colour and swirling text. The 1967 sleeve that looks exactly like the year that made it.