They say don’t judge a book by its cover, but what about an album? Cover art is often our first impression of a record, giving the listener a first impression of what might be inside. It’s an important thing to get right, which is why certain musicians have looked to the art world for expertise.
Some, like Patti Smith, hire artists who later become famous for museum-quality work, in her case her friend and lover Robert Mapplethorpe. Others, such as Clipse, have turned to already-famous artists within a certain culture, in their case the former street artist KAWS. Others still choose already-famous artworks.
As the Recording Academy prepares to inaugurate the Best Album Cover Category, we’re looking at some prominent examples of album covers by famous artists. From Andy Warhol to Wolfgang Tillmans, plenty of important names have lent their talents to a record cover or two.
The Velvet Underground & Nico - The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967)
Artwork by Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol’s influence on the Velvet Underground has long been the subject of music mythology.
The artist served as the band’s manager from 1965, making them the house band for his Exploding Plastic Inevitable roadshow, securing sponsorship from gear manufacturer Vox, and putting up the money for them to record their now-legendary 1967 debut album. Much to the chagrin of Lou Reed and other bandmembers, Warhol also insisted they let Nico, the German singer and model who had already appeared in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, appear on the record.
Though the band soon cut ties with both Warhol and Nico, The Velvet Underground & Nico became one of the most influential and important rock records of all time. Brian Eno famously declared that despite low sales, "everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band."
Its Warhol-designed cover art aided in building that reputation: Early versions featured the banana as a sticker, inviting buyers to "peel slowly and see." Taking the sticker off revealed the flesh-colored fruit, a phallic symbol that cheekily and subtly advertised the hidden world of transgressive sensuality found on the record in songs like "Venus in Furs" and "Femme Fatale." Warhol would go on to design further record covers, including the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers, but none would ever be as iconic as that bruised banana.
Patti Smith - Horses (1975)
Artwork by Robert Mapplethorpe
Thanks largely to her bestselling 2010 memoir Just Kids, Patti Smith’s relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe has entered the public imagination as an epic example of deep romance and friendship. Mapplethorpe would gain notoriety and acclaim as a photographer, making New York’s gay BDSM scene the subject of his artistic investigation and exploring his own sexuality in the process.
It was a process not without consequences: His 1989 exhibition "The Perfect Moment," which Smith contributed to, instigated a battle over censorship as part of the larger culture wars of the ‘80s and ‘90s, and the artist himself was a victim of the AIDS epidemic, dying in 1989.
Yet his most famous image may be the portrait of Smith that adorns the cover of her landmark 1975 debut Horses. The understated photo – the singer in a white shirt, black jacket over her shoulder, lit by natural light – was nearly binned by doubtful executives. Yet it would perfectly compliment the equally minimal record, characterized by simple chord progressions and bold lyricism ("Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine," she sings on "Gloria").
Produced by John Cale of the Velvet Underground and featuring Television frontman Tom Verlaine, Horses would become a touchstone of the punk scene and one of the most acclaimed and influential records of all time; Rolling Stone ranked Mapplethorpe’s photo as the sixth best album cover of all time in 2024.
Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation (1988)
Artwork by Gerhard Richter
German artist Gerhard Richter has worked in many modes, but none are as famous as his hyperrealist paintings, designed to replicate photography and make the viewer question their perception of reality. Paintings such as Kerze (Candle) from 1982 confront the idea of the photograph as a representation of truth and absolute reality, with Richter occasionally adding image blur or other imperfections to trick and destabilize us further. The flame looks so real we can almost imagine it flickering.
Richter’s candle paintings have gained recognition outside of the art world thanks to some very unexpected fans: Sonic Youth. The noise rockers were just as influenced by avant-garde free improv as they were by the Stooges and MC5. The placid image of a candle frozen in time provided an oddly fitting compliment to the contrasting dynamics of the album, filled with raucous, chugging noise ("Hey Joni") and quiet moments ("Providence"). Opener "Teen Age Riot," with its hypnotic opening passage followed by upbeat melodic punk rock, perfectly epitomizes this.
Metallica - Load (1996)
Artwork by Andres Serrano
As one of the pioneers of thrash metal and a target of the 1980s "satanic panic," Metallica is no stranger to controversy. Yet even the hardened metalheads found the work of conceptual photographer Andres Serrano a little too hard to swallow when guitarist Kirk Hammett pitched one of his photographs for the cover of their 1996 album Load.
Serrano was already somewhat infamous for his use of bodily fluids in his artwork, having attracted congressional ire for his 1987 photo Piss Christ, which shows a crucifix suspended in a glass of the artist’s own urine. Outraged Christians considered the photo blasphemous, yet Serrano, a Catholic himself, insisted the intent was devotional.
None of the band members in Metallica had religious hangups, but they were certainly split over the artwork, which depicts a mixture of cow’s blood with his own semen. Hammett discovered the photo, titled Semen and Blood III, in the artist’s monograph Body and Soul, attracted by its resemblance to midcentury abstract expressionism and psychedelic art. Drummer Lars Ulrich liked it as well, but bassist Jason Newsted and lead singer James Hetfield felt it was pointlessly shocking and worried that retailers would refuse to stock the record. Eventually they compromised, listing Serrano’s name in the liner notes but not the name of the artwork. They even used another of his photos the following year for their next album Reload.
Anohni and the Johnsons - I Am A Bird Now (2005)
Artwork by Peter Hujar
Candy Darling was one of the first transgender celebrities, a member of Andy Warhol’s clique at the Factory and an actress whose career was cut tragically short when she died of lymphoma at age 29. Her life and death would be immortalized when she was photographed in the hospital by Peter Hujar, who would also die tragically young several years later during the AIDS epidemic. The stark black and white image is both undeniably tragic and suffused with a certain macabre camp, with a heavily made-up Darling refusing to die looking anything but fabulous, refusing to let cancer strip her of her hard-fought identity, dignity, and beauty.
Anohni had not come out publicly as trans when she used Hujar’s portrait as the cover of her group the Johnsons’ Mercury Prize-winning 2005 album I Am A Bird Now. But it’s hard not to see its use as a retroactive statement of trans identity, solidarity, and mourning, especially when paired with the intimacy and soulfulness of the record. In his review for Pitchfork, Brandon Stosuy called the photo "the perfect complement to the ghostly hymnals that flit and sigh behind its black and white shadows." On later albums Anohni would continue to use transgender-focused imagery, using a photo of Marsha P. Johnson for her 2023 album My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross.
Read more: Breaking Down Anohni And The Johnsons' 13-Year Journey To 'My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross'
Kanye West - Graduation (2007)
Artwork by Takashi Murakami
Kanye West has made it a habit of using famous fine artists for his album artwork, recruiting George Condo for his 2010 opus My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. But his collaborations with Takashi Murakami remain some of his most indelible covers.
Even before working with West, Murakami was already one of Japan’s most famous and popular artists. His Superflat movement elevated the aesthetics and ideas of anime, manga, and other facets of Japanese subculture to high art, connecting it with the country’s existing creative traditions such as ukiyo-e.
West had long been a fan of anime, and for his 2007 album Graduation, a futuristic pop-rap departure from his earlier records, he decided to let out his inner otaku. He modeled his "Stronger" video after the cinematic cyberpunk anime Akira and hired Murakami to transform his "Dropout Bear" mascot into a stylized, kawaii character blasting off into space. Murakami’s take on the character would appear in the video for "Good Morning," as well as single artwork for "Stronger" and "Homecoming." Mixing together pop art with pop rap turned out to be a good idea: Graduation received rave reviews, topped the Billboard 200 and generated several hit singles, including the chart-topping "Stronger."
Murakami would once again work with West under very different circumstances, producing the artwork for Kids See Ghosts, a 2018 collab record with Kid Cudi recorded and released during his "Wyoming Sessions" in 2018. Far from the celebratory tone of Graduation, this record would detail both artists’ struggle with mental illness, and Murakami’s cover is much more mysterious and eerie. The artist appropriates Katsushika Hokusai’s woodblock print depictions of Mt. Fuji and bathes it in lurid color, with a group of creepy-cute cloudlike ghosts floating in front of it.
Frank Ocean - Blond (2016)
Artwork by Wolfgang Tillmans
In an era when everyone knows too much about each other thanks to social media, Frank Ocean has gone to extreme lengths to remain unknowable. Nowhere is this better stated than on the cover for his 2016 album Blonde, shot by Wolfgang Tillmans.
On the cover, Ocean is in the shower, his hair dyed a vibrant green, his hand covering his face. It’s an vulnerable, intimate image that relates both to Ocean’s queer identity – he very publicly came out as bisexual in 2012 in the leadup to Channel Orange – and his need for privacy. It also expresses the classic artist dilemma of having to bear one’s soul in order to survive: Ocean reveals his body, but not his face, showing us only part of himself and keeping the most important part private.
Ocean’s collaboration with Tillmans would go far beyond this single image. The R&B star would work with the photographer on a zine, titled Boys Don’t Cry, released in advance of Blonde, and include the photographer’s electro-pop track "Device Control" on the video version of his album Endless. Tillmans had spent years documenting the youth culture of his own generation, which embraced techno music, rave culture, and queer pride in the years following the German Reunification. His work with Ocean introduced him to an entire new generation of youth culture, one that held the singer up as a deeply important symbol of freedom, courage, and uncompromising artistry.
Learn more: Frank Ocean Essentials: 10 Songs That Embody The Elusive Icon's R&B Genius
Lorde - Melodrama (2017)
Artwork by Sam McKinniss
Brooklyn-based painter Sam McKinniss is an expert at translating lurid pop culture and celebrity scenes into provocative oil paintings: Britney Spears at the VMAs, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in Eyes Wide Shut, Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman in Batman Returns. So it would make sense that an actual pop star would reach out and ask for a portrait, and even more sense that it would be someone as deeply aware of the caustic nature of fame as Lorde. The pop star requested a painting with "colorful teenage restlessness," and McKinness crafted the piece after a photoshoot produced the necessary reference images.
The result, a moody image of Lorde laying in bed, bathed in a mysterious blue glow, would become a very appropriate cover for her comeback album Melodrama. The follow-up to her massively successful bedroom pop of Pure Heroine saw the singer express her personal struggles with fame and relationships across a bigger, more expansive production style courtesy of Jack Antonoff. Melodrama later earned a GRAMMY nomination for Album Of The Year, and the cover has since graced multiple best-of lists.
The Strokes - The New Abnormal (2020)
Artwork by Jean-Michel Basquiat
Jean-Michel Basquiat died tragically young at age 27, but his artistic output was prolific and varied. In addition to the reference-heavy, graffiti-derived neo-expressionist paintings that made him famous, he was heavily active in the now-storied Downtown New York scene of the time, bridging the fine art crowd with transplant art-punks and the then-nascent hip-hop culture alike. He was in the noise-rock band Gray with actor Vincent Gallo and played a DJ in Blondie’s "Rapture" video, and designed the cover art for Ramellzee and K-Rob’s single "Beat Bop."
It makes sense, then, that a band like the Strokes would use one of Basquiat’s paintings for their album cover. The group rose to fame during NYC's early-2000s garage rock and dance-punk era retroactively titled "indie sleaze" in recent years. As if they wanted to recognize that continuity, their 2020 album The New Abnormal features Basquiat’s painting Bird on Money, a work typical of the artist’s mixed-up sensibility. Referencing jazz legend Charlie Parker, the eagle clutching a bundle of arrows on the U.S. dollar bill, and the artist’s eventual burial place, the Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, the piece pairs well with the record’s Trump-era anxiousness.
Clipse - Let God Sort Em Out (2025)
Artwork by KAWS
The cartoon-inspired pop art of Brian Donnelly a.k.a. KAWS, who started out as a street artist in New York before making his way into museums and prestigious art collections, is very popular. His work is owned by the likes of Swizz Beatz, Pharrell Williams and members of BTS, and he’s earned commercial collaborations with Uniqlo, A Bathing Ape, and even the video game Fortnite. Yet there are plenty who feel his art is uninspired and lazy, a beneficiary of the current heavily-marketized era of art. Anny Shaw of The Art Newspaper criticized "the sheer conceptual bankruptcy of KAWS’s work" after a painting of his riffing on "The Simpsons" sold for $14.8 million at Sotheby’s.
Still, Donnelly’s work appeals to a certain type of person, typically wealthy and hip-hop adjacent, that appreciates his irreverent take on cartoon imagery and the appropriative mechanics. That includes Pusha T and Malice of Clipse, who re-recruited him to design the cover of their excellent new album Let God Sort Em Out, fifteen years on from their last collaboration, 2010’s Until the Casket Drops. The cover shows KAWS’ "Companion" character rendered as a skeleton, with the bones being "sorted out" by a pair of gloved hands. Alternative covers were also designed, one by Japanese illustrator Verdy featuring his "Vick" character riding in a white Porsche driven by Jesus Christ and another more muted design by Josh Sperling.