Björk, Blondie and Bruce – the cover portraits that deserve to hang in a gallery
The National Portrait Gallery in London is to display the photo from the cover of Kate Tempest’s album. But it’s not the only cover portrait that deserves to be exhibited – here are some of our favourites
@michaelahannWed 29 Apr 2015 11.38 BST Last modified on Wed 26 Jul 2023 14.56 BST
Patti Smith – Horses (1975)
One of the most famous album cover portraits of all time, and justly so. Smith – defiant, unconventional but oddly vulnerable – has said the portrait says as much about Robert Mapplethorpe, the photographer, as it does about her. It’s more than an album cover – 40 years on, it remains the defining image of Smith. Share on Facebook Share on TwitterPet Shop Boys – Actually (1987)
Look, Chris Lowe isn’t wearing a hat! That’s not the only thing that makes this cover great – though his unhappy scowl is a delicious counterpoint to Neil Tennant’s yawn. The original sleeve plan was to use a portrait by Alison Watt, who had just won a National Portrait Gallery competition. The pair weren’t pleased with the results, and substituted this Cindy Palmano photo, originally shot for Smash Hits. “I hate the photo,” Chris Lowe has said. “I can’t stand the way my hair is.” Share on Facebook Share on TwitterSimon and Garfunkel – Bookends (1968)
Simon and Garfunkel’s album covers tended to be 60s-styled in the way we like to forget: a bit dated, a bit chintzy – they routinely looked terrible on their covers. Except for this one, where they look sharp and nervous, Simon especially – like a pilled-up mod about to go out dancing. This is the one cover where, despite their dressing the same, you can sense the distance and tension between them. Share on Facebook Share on TwitterBob Dylan – Blonde on Blonde (1966)
Most of the 60s Dylan album sleeves are pretty great one way or another, but this one is perfect. Dylan deliberately selected a shot, by photographer Jerry Schatzberg, that had slipped out of focus. It was the kind of decision that invited decades of discussions about what the blurriness meant – but it perfectly summed up Dylan’s desire to avoid being defined by others. Share on Facebook Share on TwitterMos Def – Black on Both Sides (1999)
It’s rare to find a cover portrait that doesn’t seek to glamourise the artist in one way or another, even if it is by making them into grubby urchins, Mos Def’s debut album was adorned with a startlingly plain portrait – actually reminiscent of Kate Tempest’s in the lighting and the lack of interest in flattering its subject – that suggests a man in thought. It promises you the music inside will repay your attention. Share on Facebook Share on TwitterRamones – Ramones (1976)
Roberta Bayley defined the Ramones with the shot that went on to the cover of their debut album. If the purpose of a debut is to fix a group at a particular point in the imagination, this one succeeded in spades: after this, you could never think of the Ramones as anything bar a street gang. Share on Facebook Share on TwitterDavid Bowie – Low (1977)
As with Dylan’s 60s album covers, pretty much any of Bowie’s 70s covers serves as a fantastic portrait of the man. One of the intriguing things about the covers of the Berlin Trilogy albums is that all three use pictures of Bowie looking away from the camera, whereas most of the glam albums saw him staring down the lens, as if to capture his turning away from the music that had made him famous. This shot – a still from The Man Who Fell to Earth – captures a Bowie both unworldly and earthbound: an alien in a hooded parka. Share on Facebook Share on TwitterSly and the Family Stone – The Essential (2002)
The only compilation allowed into this list gets on it purely because of that magnificent image: the absurdity and ambition of Sly Stone writ not just large, but in Brobdingnagian proportions. As another San Franciscan act sang at roughly the same time: “One pill makes you larger / And one pill makes you small.” Share on Facebook Share on TwitterJoan Baez – Where Are You Now, My Son? (1973)
She was, of course, beautiful, but it’s more than beauty that makes this portrait of Baez so arresting. Where is she looking? What is happening just off camera? She looks as if she’s walking and has been caught, unexpectedly, her thoughts interrupted. It’s a portrait that raises questions and makes you want to know more. Share on Facebook Share on TwitterBryan Ferry – Another Time Another Place (1974
)Ferry was evidently tired of the glitter and unlikely shoulder pads by 1974. He wanted to be a playboy, and his first solo album cast him as that: swimming pool, white tux and carefully held cigarette are all key props. What bets the apparently artless pose, with one hand in pocket, actually came after six unsuccessful hours of shooting? Share on Facebook Share on TwitterElvis Costello – This Year’s Model (1978)
Elvis turns the camera back on the world, and really doesn’t like what he sees – a faultless image. Photographer Chris Grabin has said: “Alongside a powerful stereo I kept a large record collection at my Camden Studio, and artists would choose music they enjoyed or were interested in for their sessions. Just as we were about to start shooting, Elvis asked me if I had Hotel California by the Eagles, and could I play it. I was puzzled by his choice – until he told me that he loathed the record, but wanted to look really pissed off and angry in the shots!” Share on Facebook Share on TwitterJulian Cope – Fried (1984)
He’s naked under there, and he’s on top of Alvecote Mound slag heap. Rarely has a cover image reflected the state of the album’s maker more clearly than this. And it is, genuinely, unforgettable. Share on Facebook Share on TwitterPJ Harvey – Rid of Me (1993)
Rid of Me’s cover is the result of a combination of serendipity and deliberation – the photo was taken by Maria Mochnacz, in her bathroom – a space so small there was no room for Mochnacz to look through her viewfinder. The picture was taken in darkness, and Harvey is captured by flash, swinging her hair through the air. Striking and dynamic (and topless) without conforming to any of the industry demands for women to be sexualised – it’s a startling piece of work. Share on Facebook Share on TwitterBruce Springsteen – Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978)
Why did Springsteen pick this photo of him looking concerned inside the nondescript home of photographer Frank Stefanko? “When I saw the picture I said, ‘That’s the guy in the songs.’ I wanted the part of me that’s still that guy to be on the cover. Frank stripped away all your celebrity and left you with your essence. That’s what that record was about.” Share on Facebook Share on TwitterSade – Promise (1984)
It’s probably quite hard for a professional photographer to take a bad photo of someone as beautiful as Sade Adu, a former model. But this one manages to capture her music’s odd combination of twilit warmth and definite distance: she looks cautious here, keeping arms around herself so as not to let you in. The Promise might be that you have the chance to unravel those secrets. Share on Facebook Share on TwitterMichael Jackson – Off the Wall (1979)
A second tuxedo offering, but this one communicates something quite different from the Bryan Ferry shot. A joyous Jackson is ready to dance, and he wants you to join him. He’s in a tux because he wants to make sure you have the best night of your life, not because he’s already bored of cocaine and supermodels – which is what Ferry’s cover seems to say. It’s hard not to wish he could have stayed like this. Share on Facebook Share on TwitterPeter Gabriel – Peter Gabriel (1977)
Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell of Hipgnosis couldn’t half come up with some pretentious stinkers of album covers. But when they got it right, they got it really right. On his first solo album, Gabriel takes second place to the car – Thorgerson’s Lancia. He’s an incidental detail, sent to the background by the hand colouring of the car. But then you notice something: he’s not looking out of the windscreen – that’s the boot, not the bonnet. What’s going on here? Everything’s gone wrong. Share on Facebook Share on TwitterAretha Franklin – Yeah!!! (1965)
Aretha’s great Atlantic soul albums had curiously lackadaisical covers, which don’t reflect the power and wisdom in the grooves. For a cover that looks like those records sound, you have to go back to 1965, and Yeah!!!, a jazz album recorded for Columbia. Franklin stares boldly down the lens, her eyebrows raised, her mouth half folding into a smile. She looks like a woman who knows everything. Share on Facebook Share on TwitterKevin Rowland – My Beauty (1999)
A portrait whose fame is out of all proportion to its circulation: Kevin Rowland’s solo album sold only 500 copies, perhaps in consequence of the cover portrait, which was much derided at the time. Nevertheless, if you want to capture the essence of Rowand – bloody-minded, uncompromising, obsessed with image – you could hardly do better. Share on Facebook Share on TwitterIggy Pop – Lust for Life (1977)
Andew Kent captured a different Iggy Pop for the cover photograph of Lust for Life. No previous sleeve had featured him looking, well, normal – he was dumbly insolent on the first Stooges album, contorted on the second, topless and pouting on the third, and twisted on his first solo record, The Idiot. But he was Iggy smiling, like a matinee idol – just at the point his old anger and nihilism was at its most influential through punk. Sometimes the most ordinary image can be the most confrontational. Share on Facebook Share on TwitterBjörk – Debut (1993)
Björk’s album covers have been a succession of outlandish portraits, which cast her first album into stark relief: just her, no extra make-up, no saturated colours or digital manipulation. It is the only one of her covers – including Vespertine – on which she looks vulnerable. Share on Facebook Share on TwitterDr Feelgood – Down by the Jetty (1975)
In the documentary Oil City Confidential, we learn that the cover shot of Doctor Feelgood’s first album was taken early in the morning, the band back on Canvey Island after a gig in London the night before. The four of them look like they’ve walked in from filming Get Carter – men from a lost England of still-bombed-out streets, smoke-filled pubs where women never ventured, and streets black with grime. Welcome to the 1970s, the decade that optimism forgot. Share on Facebook Share on TwitterPrince – Prince (1979)
You wouldn’t get Prince posing like this now – it’s not just him being unclad that makes this photo remarkable, it’s the frankness of his gaze – he’s spent 30 years avoiding being pictured for covers looking straight into the camera. The result is that Prince looks like a person here, rather than someone playing the role of a person called Prince. Share on Facebook Share on TwitterBlondie – Parallel Lines (1978)
Here’s a cover the band themselves didn’t like – because it separated Debbie Harry from the band by putting her in that white dress. Their manager was sacked as a result. But Edo Bertoglio’s photo is perfect (aided and abetted by the design and typography): Harry is stern, the rest of the band goofy: it’s the chilliness and the pop smarts of the new wave in one portrait. Share on Facebook Share on Twitter
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