30) The Strokes – Is This It
Photographer Colin Lane met the Strokes in early 2001, after being commissioned to shoot them for The Face magazine. The album cover happened by chance – after hanging out on another shoot a few weeks later, Lane heard the band’s art director hassling them to choose an album cover. He’d brought his portfolio with him, which included the now-infamous “ass shot”. The photograph, Lane later revealed in interviews, was taken in either late 1999 or 2000. His girlfriend had just got out of the shower, while he was playing with an old polaroid camera. He found a Chanel glove and asked her to pose. “Shooting on a Big Shot isn’t easy: you can only shoot from a specific distance, and it’s really designed for head-and-shoulders portraits,” he explained to The Guardian. “But when she slid the glove on and bent forward, I knew it was the perfect shot – simple, straightforward, graphic and just so sexy.” For fans, the image represents one of the last definable scenes in music.

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29) The Notorious BIG – Ready to Die
Biggie Smalls picked a baby resembling himself to star on the cover of his debut Ready to Die. By doing so, he summed up the album’s autobiographical content, which begins with childhood and closes with death. He also uses the notion of childhood innocence to foreshadow how our surroundings can have a lasting impact.

28) David Bowie – Aladdin Sane
It might not be the quintessential David Bowie album, or the one that introduced fans to Starman. But the face staring back at you from this particular album cover is, undeniably, the most recognisable Bowie look: red mullet; a gaunt, sombre expression and that famous lightning bolt across his face.

27) Nas – Illmatic
One of the greatest debut albums – and arguably the best hip hop record – of all time has a fittingly arresting cover image. A photo of a seven-year-old Nas was superimposed over Danny Clinch’s snapshot of one of the housing projects in the New York rapper’s native Queensbridge. Designed by Aimee Macauley, it was intended to reflect how the projects used to be Nas’s entire world, “until I educated myself to see there’s more out there”. But Nas was also inviting you to see through his eyes and into those very projects where he grew up, and feel immersed in that world via the power of his storytelling.

26) Kate Bush – The Dreaming
Years after its release, Kate Bush noted how The Dreaming was deemed by many to be her “she’s gone mad” album. Its multiple, disparate narratives and metamorphic production intertwine with movie influences, particularly music hall crime capers of Houdini’s era. On the sepia-toned album cover, Bush plays the role of the escapist’s wife, looking to the distance, rather than at his face, as though trying to contact him via a different medium than mere speech. The way she holds his face in her hands gives her an additional, mesmerising power and conjures the old-world, eccentric mysticism with which she was – and still is – associated.

25) Oasis – Definitely Maybe
Photographer Michael Spencer Jones had a task on his hands organising Oasis for what is indisputably their best album cover. It was different to what the band originally envisioned – Noel Gallagher had spotted a photo of the Beatles sat round a coffee in Japan, so thought Oasis could be photographed at the dining table of guitarist Bonehead’s house in Manchester. Jones didn’t see this working, so spread the members around Bonehead’s living room instead, and asked them to bring objects that were personal to them for decoration. Noel liked Jones’s idea of hanging an inflatable globe (brought by one of the roadies) from the ceiling. “Yeah, global dominance,” he said. Soon after the album’s release, that’s exactly what happened.

24) Rolling Stones – Sticky Fingers
Andy Warhol conceived the idea of a vinyl cover with working zipper that would reveal a pair of white briefs beneath the bulging jeans of a male model, who has to this day never been identified. Many fans assumed it was Mick Jagger, but people working on the shoot said several models were photographed and Warhol never revealed which one was used. It represented what the Rolling Stones quickly became famous for: an edgy, hyper-sexual kind of swagger.

23) Miles Davis – Bitches Brew
German painter Mati Klarwein – who also created Santana’s artwork for Abraxas – was behind this gatefold cover that served as an embodiment of Davis’s creative manifesto. The surreal and complex renderings mirror what Davis does with the music itself; challenging traditional notions of structure and juxtaposing concepts of passivity and aggressiveness, anger and love.

22) AC/DC – Back in Black
Back in Black’s all-black cover design fit the mood of a band emerging from dark times. In the wake of the death of vocalist Bon Scott, AC/DC had tracked down Brian Johnson, whom Scott had previously mentioned to the band. Certain people at their record label, Atlantic, weren’t so keen on the cover, but the band were insistent: it was a memorial to Scott. And now one of the most instantly recognisable and best-loved album covers in rock history.

21) Blondie – Parallel Lines
Visually striking and symbolic of what Debbie Harry was doing both as a woman and an artist in the music industry, Parallel Lines’ cover was shot by photographer Edo Bertoglio. It was apparently rejected by the band but later chosen by their manager, Peter Leeds. The juxtaposition between the band, who beam in their matching dress suits like a bunch of schoolboys at their senior prom, and Harry, who stands defiant in her white dress, hands on hips, is wonderful. “I’m not impressed,” her stance seems to say. “Try harder.”

20) Bob Dylan – The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan
Dylan walks arm-in-arm with then-girlfriend and muse Suze Rotolo through the West Village in freezing New York, February 1963. Rotolo described the circumstances to the New York Times in 2008: “He wore a very thin jacket, because image was all. Our apartment was always cold, so I had a sweater on, plus I borrowed one of his big, bulky sweaters. On top of that I put on a coat. So I felt like an Italian sausage. Every time I look at that picture, I think I look fat.” Yet her memoir, A Freewheelin’ Time, also noted the cover’s significance, how it “influenced the look of album covers precisely because of its casual down-home spontaneity and sensibility”.

19) Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin couldn’t have picked a better image to serve as a visual introduction to their fans. It’s an easy tactic – using a photo from a real-life tragedy, in this case the Hinderburg disaster, for shock factor. But it worked, and the cover went on to become one of the most indelible images in rock music.

18) Never Mind the Bollocks – Here’s the Sex Pistols
“The album will last. The sleeve may not,” said the adverts for the Sex Pistols’ first and only studio album in 1977. The Sex Pistols were already controversial before the release of Never Mind the Bollocks – Here’s the Sex Pistols. They’d caused nationwide uproar for swearing on live TV, been fired from two record labels, and been banned from a number of live venues in England. Using the word “bollocks” on the front of their artwork caused instant censorship, and more controversy that would only benefit its performance. Despite many major retailers refusing to sell it, the album debuted at number one on the UK album charts. Today, it is arguably the most recognisable punk album cover in music history.