If you have been following the latest vinyl record manufacturing news, then you should know that aside from the pandemic, there were two other important things that happened in the music industry in 2020. First, vinyl record sales surpassed CD sales for the first time in 35 years. Second, Apollo Masters, the largest lacquer production facility in North America caught fire which affected all vinyl record manufacturers in the USA. Out of this unfortunate event, Vinyl Record Manufacturing Association (VRMA) was created, making it possible for most vinyl record manufacturing plants to continue production. Imagine that. Even if it’s one of the most challenging years of vinyl, it’s also the year we see it soar. How can this be possible?
Well...let’s make it simple: vinyl is the real deal. It’s the nostalgia, the cozy experience, the feeling of being one with the music and of course, the really cool enlarged artwork you can actually touch and display on your desk...or shelf..you get the drift. To remind you just how awesome it is to actually touch album artwork in today’s Spotify era, here are the top 5 vinyl record sleeve designs ranked by the readers of Rolling Stone Magazine and why we think they’re cool.
5. London Calling by The Clash
London Calling is a studio album of the English rock band The Clash. The band was formed in 1976 and was one of the key players of the original wave of the British punk rock. This third album was released on December 14, 1979. Five million copies of the album have already been sold worldwide since its release.
Now you may think the album’s cover was planned out but I guess I will have to disappoint you because the image in this cover is purely candid, with raw emotions. And you might just get shocked again because the person banging his guitar on stage is Paul Simonon, The Clash’s bassist. According to Simonon, the crowd was not responsive no matter what they did and even if he was generally calm bottled emotions just burst out of him that day and started doing what he was doing. Luckily, Pennie Smith who was there to take photos of them, caught the act on camera. I guess the beauty of this is in its rawness.
4. Abbey Road by Beatles
The Beatles’s eleventh studio album, Abbey Road, was released on September 26, 1969. This album has been named by most critics as the Beatles’ finest, especially with the tracks “Something” and “Here Comes the Sun” which were deemed to be among the best songs George Harrison has written for the band. In addition to this, Abbey Road has also been listed as one of the best selling albums of the band and was also included in the 2020 list of the Greatest Albums of All Time by Rolling Stone, claiming fifth place.
The album’s cover is also a thing we cannot pass up as this has become an iconic cover imitated by pop music countless times. The cover features them walking on the pedestrian lane near the Abbey Road Studios in London. Did you know that there was a funny theory that was created due to this album cover? Apparently, people were reading too much into the artwork and theorized that Paul, who was barefoot, was already dead and replaced by a doppelganger. People said that Joh, who’s in white, is the preacher. Ringo, who’s in black, is the mourner, and George, who’s in denim, is the grave digger.
Phew, it probably means nothing at all-- just four good-looking men crossing the street.
3. Nevermind by Nirvana
The American rock band Nirvana released their second studio album on September 24, 1991 with 13 musically diverse tracks. According to Kurt Cobain, the lead singer-songwriter and guitarist of the band, he aimed to produce an album that is a fusion of the mainstream pop bands and heavier rock bands. And he surely succeeded with his goal.
In addition to the album’s musical diversity, it is also known for having one of the best known album covers in American pop music. The cover is a blue of water with a male child swimming towards a dollar bill attached to a fish hook. The boy of that album cover, Elden Spencer, has now become an adult in his 30s. He has become an American model and in his 2007 MTV interview he told the interviewer that he felt weird about his role in the history of best known album covers.
2. Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd, who was a five-membered English rock band in 1965, had their eighth studio album released on March 1, 1973. The album was a bug success as it brought wealth to the four remaining members of the group at the time of release. In addition to this, Dark Side of the Moon has also influenced modern music and became a turning point for the history of rock music.
The jumping point of this cover’s conceptualization was a picture of a black and white prism on top of a music sheet, with a beam of colorful light going through it. If we think about it now, the cover was a great coincidence to the impact it gave in the lives of the four members and the lives of all the other musicians, from the past until the present.
1. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by Beatles
The Beatles’ album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was released on May 26, 1967 and is the band’s eighth studio album consisting of 13 tracks. Fans and people in general had a mixed reception on the album as most people speculated that the album’s tracks were drug-inspired. It was the first album where Paul McCartney tried the hallucinogenic drug LSD. Amongst the album’s tracks were songs like “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, which was suspicioned to be a code for LSD and “Fixing the Hole”, which was referenced by people to the use of heroin.
However, even with the controversy of the tracks and the overall message of the album, we cannot deny that the album’s cover is truly one of a kind. The album may look comedic and somehow out of place for a music album, but the thought put into its conceptualization is very remarkable. It showed the four members of the band in their satin day-glo-colored military style uniforms, showing Britain’s craze over military uniforms, while sporting a moustache that reflected the rising influence of hippie style trends. They stand at the center with cut-outs and wax works of who the member’s deemed as their heroes.
That’s about it, folks. Do you look at a vinyl record sleeve and say “woah! I’m so buyin’ this!?” or the cover doesn’t matter much to you?
