The Best Album Covers Ever.
Royal Mail recently issued a set of stamps to celebrate some of the best record covers of all time, and celebrate the Bespoke Packaging Boxes that all our favourite music comes in. It was a wonderful idea for postage stamps and they proved to be enormously popular with collectors. I didn’t agree with their choice of covers overall, but at least they included ‘The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust’…
However, the truth of it is that if Royal Mail were to issue a stamp of every brilliant album cover, then there would be no other types of stamp in use! Over the years there have been so many superb images on the sleeves of albums that it is impossible to list every single one. Obviously much of choosing the best ones ever would come down to personal choice, but there are an awful lot of covers that most music lovers would agree on.
Some record sleeves are so powerful or iconic that just about anyone would cite them as being some of the best ones ever; ‘Dark Side of the Moon’, ‘Unknown Pleasures’, ‘War of the Worlds’, ‘Aladdin Sane’, ‘Born in the USA’ and ‘Abbey Road’ would all be popular choices for a large amount of people.
You could break the best covers down into two separate categories; photography-based or artwork-based. That would make certainly things a little easier… Here is a list of some of my personal favourites-
· ‘Diamond Dogs’ by David Bowie.
· ‘Misplaced Childhood’ by Marillion.
· ‘Wish you were Here’ by Pink Floyd.
· ‘Never Forever’ by Kate Bush.
· ‘Closer’ by Joy Division.
· ‘Teaser and the Firecat’ by Cat Stevens.
· ‘Powerslave’ or ‘Seventh Son of a Seventh Son’ by Iron Maiden.
· ‘The Reptile House’ by The Sisters of Mercy.
· ‘Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness’ by The Smashing Pumpkins.
· ‘Pornography’ by The Cure.
· ‘Within the Realm of a Dying Sun’ by Dead Can Dance.
And I know damn well that I’ll have missed some really good ones out!
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