Top 16 Most Controversial Album Covers of All Time

#10 - Slayer




God Hates Us All, 2001


#09 - Marilyn Manson




Holy Wood, 2000



#08 - The Black Crowes




Amorica, 1994


#07 - Rage Against the Machine




Rage Against the Machine, 1992


#06 - Guns N' Roses




Appetite for Destruction, 1987


 #05 - Scorpions




Lovedrive, 1979


#04 - The Rolling Stones




Sticky Fingers, 1971


#03 - John Lennon & Yoko Ono




Unfinished Music No.1: Two Virgins, 1968


#02 - The Jimi Hendrix Experience




Electric Ladyland, 1968


#01 - The Beatles




Yesterday and Today, 1966

 Love it to Death – Alice Cooper (1971)






You gotta love Alice. Original versions of this album cover are affectionately known as the “thumb cover” among fans and collectors, because that wacky Vincent Fernier (aka Alice Cooper) surreptitiously poked his thumb through an opening in the front of his cape during the photo shoot in such a way that it appears to be his penis on display. Released under the Straight label (owned by Frank Zappa), this clever sight gag was allowed to slide. But when Warner Brothers acquired the label, the cover on later re-issues of the album had a version of the photo that was altered so that the offending digit was airbrushed out. And so, the further moral corruption of humanity was thusly prevented.




Far Beyond Driven – Pantera (1994)









As long as we’re delving into the anal theme here (no pun intended), take a look at the cover of Pantera’s “Far Beyond Driven”. This album’s original cover artistically depicts a large drill-bit, um… far beyond driven into a place where the sun don’t shine. I can hear the record company execs now: “Well gee, apparently that crossed some sort of line, so let’s just replace that picture with an image of the drill-bit impaling a skull instead, shall we? Problem solved.”


The Origin of the Feces – Type O Negative (1992)






The goth-metal band Type O Negative’s album, the title of which plays on Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species”. Upon first release, the album featured quite a cheeky cover photo. The derriere portrayed in this image is alleged to belong to the band’s lead vocalist Peter Steele. Apparently their label Roadrunner Records had second thoughts soon after release (what a surprise), and later issues of the album were given the more tame “green skeleton” cover, rendering the original an immediate collectable.



Blind Faith – Blind Faith (1969)





This legendary supergroup’s only album, the self-titled “Blind Faith”, featured a topless 11 year-old girl provocatively holding an aircraft type of object that some interpreted as a phallic symbol. Nice, eh? Apparently not. Well-known San Francisco rock and roll photographer Bob Seidemann, who was a personal friend of band member Eric Clapton, produced this artwork, which according to him was supposed to depict human creative achievement in technology (represented by the aircraft), borne though innocence (represented by the young child). Whatever. In the U.S. the record was issued with an alternate cover. But I’m telling you – if this blatant use of what pretty much amounts to child pornography to sell records wasn’t appalling enough, you aint seen nuthin yet:.


Virgin Killer – The Scorpions (1976)





How anyone in their right mind thought this cover photo was a good idea is beyond me. The Scorps have several controversial covers in their discography, but this one of an erotically posed 10-year-old girl takes the cake (the shattered glass pattern obscuring her genitals is part of the image). The inspiration came solely from label RCA Records’ marketing personnel; the band members had nothing to do with it, but early on they did stand behind it and tried to defend its use as being an artistically symbolic representation of the title track’s lyrical theme: that time is the killer of virgin innocence. Not surprisingly, it was soon replaced by a more acceptable alternative cover depicting the band (in a rather ridiculous pose). More recently, some band members, in particular former lead guitarist Uli Roth, have expressed regret over the cover and their original support of it.

In May 2008, U.S. conservative media group WorldNetDaily reported Wikipedia’s hosting of this image to the FBI, which led to an investigation but no resultant actions. However on Dec 5, 2008 the URL for Wiki’s image page of this photo was added to the UK-based Internet Watch Foundation’s blacklist, which resulted in the content being blocked by most of the UK’s major internet service providers. This unfortunately caused some undesirable problems, as subscribers temporarily could not edit or contribute to any Wiki pages. The blacklisting was rescinded four days later by reasoning, in part, that the photo was already widely available in the public domain. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Watch_Foundation_and_Wikipedia


Diamond Dogs – David Bowie (1974)









The sleeve of this album features a stylish painting by Belgian artist Guy Peelleart. This striking piece is a somewhat freakish representation of Bowie as a half-man half-dog creature. An anatomically correct creature by the way, to which RCA Records immediately took exception by withdrawing the records and ordering the artwork to be reproduced with the canine genitalia airbrushed out (amusing in comparison to the previous entry, which would be deemed acceptable by RCA just two years later). Inexplicably, a few unaltered versions survived and are quite valuable today, reportedly approaching close to $10,000. in value. But buyer beware: 1990 Rykodisc re-issues with the restored original image are somewhat easy to come by and though they can be worth a couple hundred dollars in their own right, they aren’t the real deal.Source URL: http://gbejadacosta.blogspot.com/2011/01/top-16-most-controversial-album-covers.html
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