

Yet as the '70s bore on, Mitchell became increasingly fascinated with jazz and began integrating it to her sound to varying degrees of commercial and critical success. Joni Mitchell's discography is littered with classic albums, with 1971's "Blue" and 1974's "Court and Spark" frequently coming to mind upon first mention. It's simple to the point of genius and helped color the perceptions of the tens of millions of people who bought it, eventually going down as one of the best-selling records of all time. While Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell (who later formed the design firm Hipgnosis) had been long-standing Floyd collaborators, the band insisted that something "simple" be done for its eighth LP, "The Dark Side of the Moon." Initially frustrated but soon later overcoming the challenge, the simple prism graphic conceived of for the cover told you everything you needed to know about the psychedelic experience waiting for you inside. While he is known for doing the designs for Peter Gabriel's early solo LPs, Ween's "The Mollusk" and artists like Paul McCartney, Led Zeppelin, The Mars Volta and Genesis, he is still best known and remembered as the man who gave Pink Floyd its distinct visual identity. For the uninitiated, Thorgerson had his hand in record covers that were both eye-catching and unapologetically Thorgerson. One can't talk about iconic album covers without talking about Pink Floyd, and if we're talking about Pink Floyd, we're talking about Storm Thorgerson. Transgressive at the time, the cover of "Sticky Fingers" pushed the limits of what was acceptable for record releases and, despite some protest, actually got away with it.
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Retailers and consumers began complaining, meetings were held as to how to solve it, and then someone came up with the genius idea of.just unzipping the records before they were stacked.


The only problem? When the vinyls laid on top of each other, the zipper was puncturing the vinyl on the album right above it.

In fact, this cover was so assured to be the talk of the town that a real-life zipper was crafted onto the sleeves of the initial release. Sleazy and intriguing at the same time, this ambitious, progressive cover was conceived by Andy Warhol, lensed by Billy Name and designed by Craig Braun. While "Sticky Fingers" is notable for featuring the first use of the iconic "tongue and lips" logo for Rolling Stones Records (the label the band established after their contract with Decca ended), that cover image was, to many at the time, downright shocking - albeit a perfect representation of the Stones at the peak of their powers. Country? Heavy metal? Reggae? Nothing was off limits, and this cover, so deceptively simple, advertised that there were no limits to what lies beneath. Pepper's" alluded to a psychedelic panoply of songs, the blank canvas the Fab Four provided us for this epic meant that they could truly traverse into any subgenre they wanted, often inventing new ones along the way. What's more, this self-titled record (only later dubbed "The White Album" for.obvious reasons) was weirdly evocative of the music contained within. With the band's name in Helvetica and ever-so-slightly off alignment, this album cover, so dismissed as a joke upon first reveal, showed that the Beatles, at the height of their powers, could truly do anything. While various artworks were commissioned for the band's ninth studio effort, it was Richard Hamilton who effectively convinced Paul McCartney and the rest of the fellas to pull off this daring middle-finger moment to the music world, having gone from colorful extravagance to stark, striking minimalism. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," helmed by Peter Blake and Jann Haworth. You could easily populate this list with numerous Beatles album covers, and one of the most iconic is the gloriously overstuffed pop art moment that was "Sgt.
