90s
In a classic Saturday Night Live Sketch in 2000, the show satirised the game show Celebrity Jeopardy – skewering both Robin Williams and Catherine Zeta Jones. But the breakout star of the sketch was comedian Darrel Hammond’s Sean Connery, who introduced the term “anal bum cover” in this memorable exchange:
In 1997 designer Peter Saville received a call from Jarvis Cocker. “They needed to reposition Pulp” he recalls, “They wanted to present Pulp more as a rock band. The music was a lot deeper, darker and moodier and they called it This Is Hardcore.”
The result was one of the most controversial album covers of the [...]
It’s always good to see the designers behind classic album covers getting critical and commercial recognition. And few designers could boast of a career as celebrated and prolific as Storm Thorgerson.
Taken By Storm: The Album Art of Storm Thorgerson was published by Vision On in 2007. It’s a selection of some of his best work [...]
In no particular order, we’re taking a look at the select few albums that are not only referred to as “landmarks” but have actually created new landmarks. For the passionate fans that love these albums, the places depicted on these sleeves have become sites of pilgrimage.
This is one of only two albums I have bought without first listening to them and both were just for the CD cover. I got this in 1999 or 2000 and have listened to it once. I’ve since lost the CD but have the case and from memory it was a dull journey into an [...]
The cover for hip hop classic Illmatic was originally going to have a picture of Nas holding Jesus Christ in a headlock. I’m not sure why that didn’t go ahead (although you would think the label might have had some concerns) but the ultimate cover is a far more reflective and subtle effort.
The first time I saw this t-shirt it was being worn by one of the cool guys in school. I didn’t know anything about Sonic Youth but I did really want the shirt. Unfortunately there was an unwritten rule that if someone from school wore a band shirt first, that was it – it just [...]
The gun featured on the cover for Foo Fighters self titled debut is the “XZ-38 Disintegrator Pistol,” which was released in 1935 as a tie-in toy for the Buck Rogers comic strip and radio show.
The photo was taken by Grohl’s then wife, talented photographer Jennifer Youngblood, who is responsible for some iconic images of Grohl’s [...]
When Johnny Cash signed with Rick Rubin’s American Recordings label in 1992, it would mark the beginning of one of the most celebrated artistic resurrections in popular music. The resulting album, released in 1994, consists of spare, dark cover versions taken from a wildly eclectic American songbook.
When I look at the cover, the first word [...]
This album along with Tool’s “Aenima” and Sepultura’s “Chaos A.D” are the few albums I remember buying and still have on rotation in my Itunes. I’m tempted to try and find the original in the garage but then I remembered how much crap is in there and would rather sit in my warm bean bag [...]
