The history of album covers goes back to the late 1930s. That’s when Columbia Records hired Alex Steinweiss as an art director, who came up with the idea of using the cover to capture the listener’s attention. 

He then took a photographer along and went to New York’s Imperial Theatre, where they took pictures of the letters spelling out ‘Smash Song Hits by Rodgers & Hart’. The image became arguably the first album cover in history and started the tradition of decorative covers that changed the brown paper or cardboard sleeves used for keeping the records until then.

Back in the day, an eye-catching cover helped the album to stand out when a person was sifting through piles of records. Even though nowadays the process is way more digitized, standing out from the rest is still as relevant as it was then. 

In the current day, people’s attention span is so short (research shows that we’ve been overtaken by goldfish when it comes to the length of attention span), some artists might not rely solely on their music to capture the listener’s attention. They might use additional means in order to make sure they remember the album, which is when a unique cover can come in handy.

Rapid technological advancement has brought not only shorter attention spans, but more ways for artists to embellish their album covers as well. Parma Recordings pointed out that in addition to an abundance of tools used for creating the images, artists now can create animated cover art, which provides the listener with an even more immersive experience.

Eye-candy-like cover art helps the artist not only to stand out but also to make sure it stays in a person’s memory. Similar to the way a picture of an actor can help us to remember the movies they’re in, catching a glimpse of an album cover can refresh our memory of the recordings it contains as well. That’s because visuals are proven to aid memory.

SHIFT eLearning pointed out that one of the easiest ways to make sure that people store information in their long-term memory is pairing concepts with meaningful visuals. It also noted that as much as 90% of information that is transmitted to the brain is visual, and emphasized that cues of such a type are believed to trigger a faster and stronger emotional response than words do.

The album covers on this list ought to evoke some sort of an emotional response; however, likely not the same one that people’s all time favorites do. A decade ago, Rolling Stone magazine asked their readers what is the best album cover of all time and listed the top ten based on their answers—it went from Andy Warhol’s print for ‘The Velvet Underground & Nico’ as number ten, to The Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ as the most favored one by music lovers.

Andy Warhol and Alex Steinweiss are just a couple of examples of people responsible for significant covers in the history of albums. Mind Smoke Records introduced an entire list of photographers and other artists who created some of the most iconic images to date, including but not limited to Charles Stewart, David Stone Martin, Jim Flora, and Neon Park.

Not all artists are applauded for a job well done when their creations end up on an iconic album. Some of them, such as photographer Kirk Weddle, for instance, face troubles even decades after the release. Weddle took the renowned picture of the baby on Nirvana’s “Nevermind” album, who then sued the photographer, as well as Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic, and others, back in 2021 (30 years after the release). Already a grown up, the baby—Spencer Elden—claimed it constituted child sexual abuse, but the judge dismissed the case in 2022.

The baby on Nirvana’s album is far from the only person to sue a musician over using their image for a cover. Pitchfork covered quite a few similar instances, including the model Ann Kirsten Kennis suing Vampire Weekend and Dead Kennedys using a picture from a parade for their “Frankenchrist” album, among others.