Not just one of the best album covers of the 70s, but one of the greatest albums of all time, this prog rock masterpiece came out in March of 1973 and took the world by storm! The design for the cover was inspired by a photograph of a beam of light projecting through a glass prism.

The only Rolling Stones album to be nominated for an Album of the Year Grammy, Some Girls is known as one of the band’s best achievements and also stands out for its amazing and controversial artwork.

The colorful scene featured an array of celebrity faces, and many of the stars actually pursued legal action against the band, forcing them to re-issue the cover with a new design that removed most of the celebrity faces.

Does this one even need an explanation? We’ve got a long-haired dude bursting out of the ground in the middle of a cemetery on a motorcycle, with a giant bat in the background! It’s one of the most badass album covers ever made.

The self-titled debutalbum from Blue Oyster Cult came with some super songs like ‘Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll’, as well as a stunning, psychedelic cover. It shows a maze-like, sci-fi scene with the band’s logo floating in the center.

Proving that stark lines and simple, black and white images can convey so much, Joy Division chose this as the cover for their first studio album. It was designed by Peter Saville and based on an image of radio waves. You can still see plenty of young kids and old rockers sporting T-shirts with this classic picture on the front.

For this cover, Elton John chose a comic book style scene, showing himself in the role of ‘Captain Fantastic’ as he seems to be flying on a piano, with a range of Jim Henson-style magical creatures all around. The album even came with a poster of the cover, which could be found hanging in many teenagers’ bedrooms during the 70s and 80s.

As one of the greatest singers and songwriters of all time, Paul McCartney wanted something special for his first solo album after the end of The Beatles. It shows a bowl of red liquid with little cherries dotted around. It’s a simple and stark image, but it was one that caught the eye of countless people in record shops around the world.

The cover art for Who’s Next from The Who turned more than a few heads and raised plenty of eyebrows upon the album’s release. It features a photograph depicting the four bandmates seemingly having just urinated on a concrete slab.

Believe it or not, this rude image was inspired by the classic sci-fi movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and only one of the band member’s (Pete Townshend) actually urinated on the structure in question. Buckets of water were used for the others.

An experimental, avant-garde album that helped to show there was life for Lennon beyond the Beatles, this album also gave us a tender glimpse at the love between the British singer and Yoko Ono right on the cover.

Here’s one you might remember spinning around the old record player in your family home. The sixth studio album from Supertramp, Breakfast in America features a funny cover scene with actress Kate Murtagh posing like the Statue of Libert, holding up some orange juice in front of a breakfast-themed NYC cityscape.

Album covers don’t come any funkier than this! Funkadelic’s ‘One Nation Under A Groove’ shows a bunch of colorful heroes planting an R&B flag, and it was the sort of album people loved to display at the front of their record collections back in the 70s as it was always guaranteed to catch the eye of guests and trigger a fun musical discussion.

This one is pretty painful to look at, quite literally showing a weasel tearing at a smiling man’s face and drawing blood as it digs its teeth and claws into its skin, but there’s something magnetic about the retro comic advert style used in the design.

Best known for the song ‘Layla’, this album is also famous for its lovely cover artwork. It was painted by Frandsen-De Schomberg, and Eric Clapton loved the picture so much he didn’t want any text over it with the album title or band name.

Led Zeppelin IV is best-known for being one of the band’s greatest albums of all time and featuring what is arguably Led Zep’s best ever song: Stairway to Heaven.

It’s also renowned for its unique cover art. It’s shows a 19th century oil painting bought by Robert Plant and hung up on the wall of an old home. It was one of the most unique covers of the decade and always seemed to stand out in record shops and collections.

The Velvet Underground’s fourth album gives us a fun look at 70s culture, from the font used for the band’s name and album title to the hippie-style pink clouds emanating from the subway stairs.

As well as an amazing title, this album also came with a killer cover. Illustrated by Joe Heiner, it was inspired by an image of pro golfer Chi Chi Rodriguez, but the band weren’t allowed to simply use Rodriguez’s face.

So they decided to get creative! They morphed together the faces of several American presidents, like JFK and Richard Nixon, adding in the Rodriguez image too. Funnily enough, Rodriguez heard about the album and gave the band permission to use his image, but by that point, production had already started.

Big band maestro Enoch Light gave us a modernist style artwork with the Permissive Polyphonics album, with squares and rectangles of bright, bold colors assembled around the text. It’s the sort of album 70s people loved to show off to prove how arty they were.

A simple album cover in so many ways, but with such significance behind it, Let It Be was the final studio album recorded by The Beatles. It shows the four band members each in their own little frames, perhaps foreshadowing the unique solo careers and journeys they would each go on to follow after the album was released.

Talking Heads’ singer David Byrne was the one to think up the idea for this album cover, with artist Jimmy De Sana being tasked with bringing that vision to life. It’s a mosaic made up of more than 500 Polaroid photographs, creating an overall image of the band members standing in place on a red background.

It’s the album that gave us one of the 70s most seminal hits, ‘More Than A Feeling’, and it also features a cover that kids of the 70s used to love to stare at. Three different artists worked on the cover, which features guitar-shaped spaceships sucking up cities from exploding planets.

When delivering a debut album, bands have to think about every single aspect in order to stand out and be successful. Maybe this is why so many debut albums feature on this list with truly iconic artwork we can never forget!

The Ramones immediately introduced themselves to the world with this unforgettable black and white photograph, showing the band members casually leaning against a wall with leather jackets, long hair, and not a care in the world. They managed to portray their punk attitude in just a single snapshot, paving the way for an entire movement.

The Rolling Stones are no strangers to innuendo, always walking along the tightrope of controversy with their lyrics and band-related imagery, including this iconic album cover. Designed by none other than Andy Warhol himself, the photograph was taken by Billy Name, showing a male crotch in blue jeans with an actual zipper stuck on top.

Many people assumed that the man in the photo must be Mick Jagger, but the identity of the photo’s subject remains a mystery! Warhol photographed several men and never revealed which one he chose as the final image.

With this album, Black Sabbath basically invented heavy metal, showing a darker and more gothic side to traditional rock and roll, with lyrics discussing the devil and shadowy, nightmarish figures. The cover is fittingly eerie, showing a woman dressed in black standing in front of an old building.

David Bowie gave us a range of iconic album covers, and Ziggy Stardust was one of the best. The cover photo was taken in London and the ‘K. West’ sign was just a coincidence, but many fans of the album developed all kinds of theories about what it might mean, with many suggesting it was a kind of code for the word ‘Quest’.

If you want fantastic cover art from your rock and roll bands, just look at Kansas. They always seem to put extra effort into their album images, and Point of Know Return is one of the best examples of this. It shows an old ship seemingly sailing right to the edge of the world or the titular ‘point of no return’, with a huge dragon circling around the outside edges.

Here’s a stunning example of a band making use of wordplay in their album art! Bob Marley and The Wailers gave us a breathtaking introduction to reggae beats with Burnin’, and they actually burned their own likenesses into a piece of wood to make the cover too.

154 is an arty album in many ways, including the cover. Drawn in a modernist style, with bold colors, forms, and shapes, it either drew you in or pushed you away, depending on your taste.

Iggy Pop is one of the baddest singers in the punk world and this amazing photograph perfectly captured the titular ‘raw power’ of his style, presence, and charisma.

Houses of the Holy gave us such Led Zeppelin classics as ‘The Rain Song’ and ‘No Quarter’, as well as a cover that boggled the mind. It was a collage of several photos taken at the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland, and the photoshoot lasted ten days in total.

Prog rock legends Yes worked together with their favorite artist, Roger Dean, to make this amazing cover. Dean called it one of the most ‘elaborate and complex’ things he’d ever worked on, and the fantasy painting on this album ties in with other Dean images from other Yes albums to create a kind of otherworldly narrative.

Generally regarded as Elton John’s best ever album, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road also has one of his best ever covers. Like many Elton John album covers, this one is colorful and emotional, catching the eye and saying so much.

Hotel California is one of the most mysterious songs in the history of rock and roll, and the Eagles wanted a fittingly mysterious album cover to match. It shows a slightly vague and shadowy hotel, bathed in the glow of sunset.

The hotel in question was actually The Beverly Hills Hotel, but two other hotels were photographed in preparation for the album’s release, with the band having the final say on which photo to use.

Another brilliant album cover from David Bowie, this one followed right on from Ziggy Stardust. Really, it’s quite a simple cover, featuring a photo of Bowie with a lightning bolt painted across his face, but it’s one of the most enduring and iconic images in the musical world.

The debut album from Van Halen was big, bombastic, and hugely successful, setting the band off on the path to stardom. It also came with a fittingly thrilling cover, showing the band members playing their instruments with passion and fire.

Jailbreak gave us two of Thin Lizzy’s best songs in the form of the titular track and ‘The Boys Are Back in Town’. It also gave us this super cool and perfectly 70s cover showing the band seeming to escape from a fiery scene on a TV monitor while an evil figure observes. When you open up the cover, you then discover a second image, showing the band members running from some kind of alien attack.

Whether you enjoyed their music or not, Funkadelic were one of those bands who always seemed to attract your attention back in the 70s with their innovative and surprising album covers. This one was definitely a head-turner, showing a screaming woman’s face on the front and a skull on the back.

Pink Floyd were always so good at creating iconic images that really stuck with music fans, with The Wall being the best example. Animals was another amazing album from the band, with the cover showing an inflatable pig floating over a power station.

Roger Waters came up with the idea and a massive pig balloon called Algie was made for the cover shoot. Famously, it ended up floating away and panicking a lot of people when it appeared over a major London airport.

There aren’t many bands who have left such a mark on the musical world despite having such a short career as the Sex Pistols. They only made this one album, but it helped to trigger the creation of the entire punk genre. The obscene text, bright colors, and newspaper-style fonts told you all you needed to know about the band right from the start.

The Grateful Dead were one of the best bands of the 70s in the eyes of many rock and roll lovers. They always seemed to be touring, recording, and giving the fans what they wanted.

This album cover has gone down in history, with the lightning bolt skull symbol becoming synonymous with the band and still being seen on T-shirts, stickers, patches, and more all over the globe.

Bowie’s fourth studio album gave us another memorable image of the iconic star. It shows Bowie embracing his androgynous style, stroking his long blonde hair and wearing a dress, breaking down gender barriers and setting himself up as one of the most exciting and alternative stars of the time.

Kiss are a band that have always put a lot of care and effort into their appearance, with their famous face paint and unique personalities adding so much to every live show.

They bring this same dedication to aesthetic excellence to their album covers, with this one featuring the band standing proudly while a group of rather curvy women in Kiss face paint admire them from below, a real fantasy scene for many teen boys of the 70s.

Punk rock bands of the 70s really enjoyed black and white photos of the band members leaning against brick walls, and why not? It was a look that worked, especially for The Clash, with the torn edges of the photo symbolizing the band’s anarchistic style.

An incredible album that has gone down in history and helped to ensure that the 70s would always be remembered as the heyday of creative rock and roll, The Wall came out in 1979.

The initial cover simply featured an image of a white brick wall without any text, but some text was later added. Either way, no true child of the 70s can ever resist singing along to those famous words, “We don’t need no education!”

Okay, it might not be the classiest design on this list, but in record shops, you need to find a way to stand out, and Stevie Wonder did just that with the bright colors and concentric circles of this unique design.

For an album cover that really encapsulates the creative, hippie spirit of the 70s, just take a look at So Far by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. It was painted by none other than Joni Mitchell and shows the four titular band members in a colorful, psychedelic scene.

One of Kraftwerk’s best albums, this cover really embodied the band’s robotic themes and unique style. It blends the striking color combination of red and black with geometric fonts and almost dystopic imagery.

The English art group Hipgnosis was responsible for this cover, and they also created covers for plenty of other 70s legends like Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, and UFO. It features a captivating, colorful image showing a deep-sea diver carrying a woman ashore, with the album title written in a curvy font up in the corner.

Exile on Main St. was the 10th album of The Rolling Stones, and Mick Jagger really wanted to create a cover that casted the band in the role of ‘runaway outlaws’. The final image is a collage of photos taken by Robert Frank, showing a range of circus performers in black and white.

German painter Mati Klarwein was responsible for the awe-inspiring cover art for Bitches Brew from Miles Davis. Klarwein took a lot of inspiration from surrealist painter Salvador Dali.

The second album from Black Sabbath saw the release of some of the band’s best songs like ‘Iron Man’ and ‘War Pigs’. The album was originally entitled War Pigs, and the cover photograph was designed with that name in mind. The band later decided to change the album’s name but kept the original art.

At first glance, this cover seems pretty simple, featuring nothing but an American flag, but then you start to look closer, noticing that the stars have been replaced with suns and the normally blue rectangle is colored black. Sly Stone says he wanted suns rather than stars as ‘there are already too many stars in this world’.

The cover of London Calling provides the perfect introduction to what The Clash were all about. It shows Paul Simonon smashing his Fender bass on a New York City stage. He apparently smashed it out of anger after learning that security rules of the venue meant that audience members weren’t allowed to stand up. The cute text, meanwhile, pays homage to Elvis Presley’s first album.

Sadly, due to Nick Drake’s death just a couple of years after this one was released, Pink Moon was the last album we ever got from him. The surrealist, Dali-style artwork on the cover looks like it could easily be found in an art gallery, but it was painted by an artist named Michael Trevithick, a friend of Drake’s sister.

Fleetwood Mac’s eleventh studio album featured a very classy cover showing a photograph of Mick Fleetwood and Stevie Nicks, with Nicks dressed up as her ‘Rhiannon’ character.

The Imperials were one of the more obscure bands to spot in 70s record collections, not quite attracting the same global followings as bands like The Rolling Stones or The Eagles, but they had some funky album covers, like this one.

Peter Gabriel’s first solo album features a photo of the singer himself sitting in a car while rain seems to pour down on the windscreen. It looks simple, but way more work went into this one that you might imagine!

It wasn’t raining on the day of the shoot, so the car had to be sprayed with a hose. Not only that, but the image was taken fully in blakc and white, so an artist had to spend hours slowly coloring in the car by hand.

One of the best albums of the 70s, Innervisions features cover art by Efram Wolff, who was also responsible for many other classic albums of the 70s. It casts Stevie in the role of a kind of ‘oracle’, letting him see things that others cannot, in spite of his blindness.

Led Zeppelin III gave us even more Led Zep classics like ‘Immigrant Song’ and ‘Gallows Pole’, as well as another cover you could stare at for hours on end. The cover was designed by multimedia artist Zacron and consisted of an assortment of seemingly random images all scattered over a white background.

Under the cover, another collection of random images could be found on a piece of card covering the vinyl itself. There were little holes in the cover sleeve, so you could rotate the card disc underneath and change the way the outer image looked, providing an almost endless array of possibilities.

For Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks, the singer chose this fuzzy, hazy profile picture as the cover. It’s an intriguing choice, especially considering the clarity and direct nature of Dylan’s lyrics and singing style.

An amazing album by German rock group Faust, Faust IV features a really intriguing cover that stood out for its simplicity. While bands like Yes and Kansas were opting for elaborate and fantastical artworks, Faust kept things simple with this minimalistic design.

One of the most recognizable images in the world of rock and roll, the cover for Born to Run shows a smiling Springsteen holding a guitar in his hands while leaning on the late, great, saxophone star, Clarence Clemons, a member of Bruce’s E-Street Band. That iconic pose has been imitated on countless occasions, even by Sesame Street!

Yes always enjoyed delving into the fantastical for their album designs, with friend-of-the-band artist Roger Dean designing most of their covers. It’s certainly a unique style that divides opinion, but whether you like it or not, it helped to define the entire identity of Yes as prog rock wizards.

David Bowie had such an iconic look, it made a lot of sense for his album covers to mainly focus on his face and unique sense of style. Even in this simple profile show on Low, there’s something mesmerising about Bowie’s expression.

With a name like ‘Electric Light Orchestra’, you knew you could always expect the unexpected when it came to this particular band. For their seventh studio album, they enlisted the services of Japanese illustrator Shusei Nagaoka to create a shimmering, colorful space station. During live shows, the band actually performed in a massive UFO-style set inspired by this image.

English singer-songwriter Elvis Costello gave us one of the best albums of 1976 with My Aim Is True, and the cover is only a simple picture, but it says so much. Costello’s pose is iconic and infectious, with his wry smile and dancing legs drawing us into his music. Plus, if you look closer at the little checkerboard pattern around the edges, you can see the words ‘Elvis is King’ written again and again.

The Basement Tapes features a cheerful, colorful photograph that was taken by Reid Miles in the basement of an LA YMCA. It shows Dylan and the Band gathered together, and when folded out to incorporate the rest of the image, we see a range of characters mentioned in the songs like an Eskimo and a circus strongman.

While many album covers feature intriguing images and artworks, XTC decided to turn the tables on the entire industry with this one! The hilarious and thought-provoking album cover for Go 2 simply features white text on a black background, discussing what the cover is for and how it tricks people into spending money to make the record label and the band richer.

This album was technically Michael Jackson’s fifth, but it was the one that really saw him bust out of his previous style and stand out on his own. The charming picture on the photo draws our attention, with a smiling, confident Jackson finally ready to go it alone.

A classic album of the post-punk era, Public Image Ltd’s first album cover was styled to look just like the cover of a magazine, with song names used as the various headlines.

The third studio album from Neil Young features a relatively simple yet intriguing photograph cover. It was taken by Joel Bernstein, who later revealed that he was quite shocked Young had wanted it as the cover since he believed it to be a pretty basic shot he’d taken quite hurriedly.