Album Art-The Stories Behind Music's Iconic Album Covers

EXPLORE

Society & Culture

Health & Fitness

© 2024 PodJoint

https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Podcasts211/v4/e5/96/d7/e596d780-b709-c821-5975-0699fb8c413a/mza_16323863321054197348.jpg/600x600bb.jpg

Album Art-The Stories Behind Music's Iconic Album Covers

Charlie and Adam Yoe

148 episodes

1 day ago

Send us a text A Belgian nun with a guitar, a convent storybook that was mostly fiction, and a song so pure it pushed Elvis and Motown off the charts—until four lads from Liverpool showed up. Dominique made Sister Smile an unlikely global star, but the story behind the album cover and her life after fame is anything but simple. Grab a copy and listen along with us. Questions, comments, recommendations? We’d love to hear from you at Albumartthecoverstories@gmail.com or check our Spotify Song ...

Show more...

All content for Album Art-The Stories Behind Music's Iconic Album Covers is the property of Charlie and Adam Yoe and is served directly from their servers with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.

Send us a text A Belgian nun with a guitar, a convent storybook that was mostly fiction, and a song so pure it pushed Elvis and Motown off the charts—until four lads from Liverpool showed up. Dominique made Sister Smile an unlikely global star, but the story behind the album cover and her life after fame is anything but simple. Grab a copy and listen along with us. Questions, comments, recommendations? We’d love to hear from you at Albumartthecoverstories@gmail.com or check our Spotify Song ...

Show more...

Episodes (20/148)

Album Art-The Stories Behind Music's Iconic Album Covers

The Singing Nun--Soeur Sourire

Send us a text A Belgian nun with a guitar, a convent storybook that was mostly fiction, and a song so pure it pushed Elvis and Motown off the charts—until four lads from Liverpool showed up. Dominique made Sister Smile an unlikely global star, but the story behind the album cover and her life after fame is anything but simple. Grab a copy and listen along with us. Questions, comments, recommendations? We’d love to hear from you at Albumartthecoverstories@gmail.com or check our Spotify Song ...

2 days ago

51 minutes

Album Art-The Stories Behind Music's Iconic Album Covers

Layla and Assorted Love Songs--Derek and the Dominoes

Send us a text This is an album inspired by a Persian love tragedy that makes Romeo and Juliet read like a sitcom. It resonated with the unrequited love of a slow-handed rock guitar god in love with the wife of his Beatles bestie. The painting on the cover was never meant for an album but it matched the intense feelings that burned inside Eric Clapton when he saw and had to have the painting. and that is about half the story. Grab a copy and listen along with us. Questions, commen...

1 week ago

44 minutes

Album Art-The Stories Behind Music's Iconic Album Covers

The Original Monster Mash--Bobby "Boris" Picket and the Crypt Kickers

Send us a text It took two hours, a $300 studio bill, and a Boris Karloff impression to make a Halloween song that just won’t die. From Hollywood wannabes to a bubbling beaker of sound effects, The Original Monster Mash rose from the lab in 1962 and never went back in the grave. The album cover? A cartoony graveyard party so cheap it’s scary. Grab a copy and listen along with us. Questions, comments, recommendations? We’d love to hear from you at Albumartthecoverstories@gmail.com ...

2 weeks ago

42 minutes

Album Art-The Stories Behind Music's Iconic Album Covers

Forever Changes--Love

Send us a text A psychedelic heart shaped like Africa, stitched together from five fractured faces, became the symbol of a 60s album that may have inadvertently launched the Doors. Forever Changes was Love at their breaking point—poetry tangled with paranoia, unity drawn from disarray, and a title that promised everything and nothing at once. Grab a copy and listen along with us. Questions, comments, recommendations? We’d love to hear from you at Albumartthecoverstories@gmail.com or check ou...

3 weeks ago

41 minutes

Album Art-The Stories Behind Music's Iconic Album Covers

Crack the Skye--Mastodon

Send us a text What do a Russian mystic, astral travel, and a teenage tragedy have in common? Mastodon’s Crack the Skye. Behind the energy-enfused face of Rasputin on the cover is a story of grief, transcendence, and cosmic odyssey — a record that cracked open the sky itself. Artist Paul Romano turned the band’s most personal album into a surreal relic, equal parts Orthodox icon and psychedelic vision. Grab a copy and listen along with us. Questions, comments, recommendations? We’d love to he...

1 month ago

47 minutes

Album Art-The Stories Behind Music's Iconic Album Covers

Brothers in Arms--Dire Straits

Send us a text Raise your hand if you know the first album to sell a million CDs and outsell its vinyl twin. Okay, hands down—it was Brothers in Arms. But the cover? That dreamy blue sky with a floating steel guitar wasn’t planned at all. A jazz photographer snapped it on a whim while waiting for Mark Knopfler and a German painter obsessed with shiny objects slipped his own guitar fantasy onto the back cover, he’s still waiting on his £1 payment for the work, by the way. One guitar, two artis...

1 month ago

36 minutes

Album Art-The Stories Behind Music's Iconic Album Covers

Frankenchrist--Dead Kennedys

Send us a text Who could be offended by a bunch of old white guys driving miniature cars in a 4th of July parade on an album cover? Nobody, right? So, how did this album end up with criminal charges for its art and a $45 million lawsuit by some of the guys on the cover? Well, there was a poster inside that album . It was a landscape and it started a cultural fistfight over art, censorship, and who gets to decide what’s “too far.” Grab a copy and listen along with us. Questions, comments, reco...

1 month ago

49 minutes

Album Art-The Stories Behind Music's Iconic Album Covers

The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan--Bob Dylan

Send us a text Two kids in love, freezing their butts off in Greenwich Village, accidentally make one of the most famous album covers of all time. Bob’s grinning, Suze is clinging, and Columbia Records is loving every snow-slushed step of it. One roll of color film, zero Photoshop, no plan and a side order of romance that didn’t last as long as the legend. We’ve got the backstory on the walk. Grab a copy and listen along with us. Questions, comments, recommendations? We'd love to hear f...

1 month ago

33 minutes

Album Art-The Stories Behind Music's Iconic Album Covers

Metamorphosis & Made in the Shade-The Rolling Stones

Send us a text What do you get when two Rolling Stones compilation albums go head-to-head—both released within days of each other, both claiming the band’s legacy, and neither fully endorsed by the band itself? Metamorphosis may be the weirdest Rolling Stones album ever released. It wasn’t their idea. It wasn’t their design. And it wasn’t their payday. It was, essentially, Allen Klein’s revenge—a stitched-together patchwork of demos, castoffs, and curiosities, released without the band's bles...

1 month ago

40 minutes

Album Art-The Stories Behind Music's Iconic Album Covers

Straight Outta Compton--N.W.A.

Send us a text A busted alley. A borrowed gun. A camera pointed skyward at six young men who were about to scare the hell out of America. No budget, no entourage, no Hipgnosis, no Photoshop—just a raw shoot that captured the exact moment gangsta rap was born. Straight Outta Compton isthe debut album that rewrote the rules of hip hop and delivered a cover photo that dared you not to look away. It turned a forgotten L.A. suburb into a brand, a battleground, and a badge of honor. Grab a copy and...

2 months ago

29 minutes

Album Art-The Stories Behind Music's Iconic Album Covers

The Best of the Lovin' Spoonful--Lovin' Spoonful

Send us a text Three rock stars walk into a Baltimore pharmacy looking for a soda fountain goddess. No, it's not a setup for a joke—it’s how The Best of the Lovin’ Spoonful got burned into my teenage brain. The cover’s all charm, the band’s all hits, and the illustrator? She drew a coloring book for The Association. Seriously. Grab a copy and listen along with us. Questions, comments, recommendations? We'd love to hear from you at Albumartthecoverstories@gmail.com or check our Spotify S...

2 months ago

32 minutes

Album Art-The Stories Behind Music's Iconic Album Covers

Killers--Iron Maiden

Send us a text Meet Eddie: punk-born, axe-wielding, and metal to the bone. On Iron Maiden’s Killers, the band’s infamous mascot came into his own—bloody, maniacal, and unforgettable. But Eddie didn’t start on a cover—he started as a joke… and a mask… and maybe propaganda? From papier-mâché pub gigs to pesticide-soaked North London flats, the birth of Eddie is as outrageous as the art itself. This week, we dig into the mayhem, the making, and the metaphors behind Killers—the album where Eddie ...

2 months ago

41 minutes

Album Art-The Stories Behind Music's Iconic Album Covers

Aoxomoxoa--Grateful Dead

Send us a text A poster too psychedelic for Hawaii, a cover that might say "We Ate the Acid," and a bunny with a secret. Aoxomoxoa is the Grateful Dead at their weirdest—and possibly their most biologically symbolic. Rick Griffin’s trippy vision gave us palindromes, scarabs, uterine landscapes, and a back cover that might include Courtney Love—or maybe just a dog no one can identify. Grab a copy and listen along with us. Questions, comments, recommendations? We'd love to hear from you at Albu...

2 months ago

33 minutes

Album Art-The Stories Behind Music's Iconic Album Covers

True Blue--Madonna

Send us a text In 1986, Madonna wasn’t just making music—she was making statements, shaping image, and turning pop into high art. True Blue was the soundtrack of a passionate, tumultuous marriage, a romantic tribute wrapped in platinum pop, and a bold step into artistic control and visual elegance. From Herb Ritts' marble goddess album cover to the pristine blue tones that framed a new Madonna, this was an album about love—but also about reinvention. In this episode, we look at how True...

3 months ago

36 minutes

Album Art-The Stories Behind Music's Iconic Album Covers

Playing Possum--Carly Simon

Send us a text Carly Simon did not come to play, she came to play possum. In a moment that was part Shaft soundtrack, part Vogue cover shoot, and entirely unplanned (depending on which version of the story you believe), Simon took a stolen teddy, a glass of wine, and Norman Seeff’s camera and created one of the most talked-about covers of the 1970s. It’s not cheesecake, it’s power. It's not a pose, it’s a provocation. And it's definitely not what Carole King was doing. Grab a copy and listen ...

3 months ago

36 minutes

Album Art-The Stories Behind Music's Iconic Album Covers

No Code--Pearl Jam

Send us a text Pearl Jam didn’t just dodge the sophomore slump—they blew up the blueprint. But by No Code, they weren’t chasing hits—they were chasing meaning. The cover? A cryptic collage of Polaroids: teeth, fire, x-rays, Dennis Rodman’s eye, a stingray injury, and whatever else they had lying around. No title. No band name. No code. Just questions. The design dares you to find your own way in—much like the music inside dares you to find your own way out. Moody, fragmented, brilliant. Crack...

3 months ago

34 minutes

Album Art-The Stories Behind Music's Iconic Album Covers

Rum, Sodomy and the Lash--Pogues

Send us a text It’s one thing to borrow a painting for your album cover. It’s another to borrow one that includes severed limbs, drowned sailors, and maybe the best metaphor for life in a punk-folk band. For Rum, Sodomy & the Lash, The Pogues went big—like, 16-foot-wide French Romantic big. But behind that choice was a woman named Marsha Farquhar, an art historian, artist, and original spark behind one of the most unforgettable covers of the 1980s. In this episode, we chase the Medusa fro...

3 months ago

34 minutes

Album Art-The Stories Behind Music's Iconic Album Covers

The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway--Genesis

Send us a text This was a cover we wanted to like, but let’s just say it didn’t exactly knock us off our Broadway seats. Black-and-white, enigmatic, and full of art school ambition — it’s either a conceptual masterpiece or a poster for a freshman philosophy club. Still, there's no denying the ambition behind the album (or the band). We dig into the art, the myth, and the maze of meaning. Grab a copy and listen along with us. Questions, comments, recommendations? We’d love to hear from you at ...

3 months ago

45 minutes

Album Art-The Stories Behind Music's Iconic Album Covers

Dangerous--Michael Jackson

Send us a text Michael Jackson wanted Dangerous to last forever—and with Mark Ryden’s mind-bending cover, he may have done just that. Painted by hand over six months, the artwork is a surreal circus of mystery, mythology, and self-mythologizing. You’ll find P.T. Barnum, Botticelli, Bosch, Bubbles, and Ben the rat. This is Neverland by way of Hieronymus Bosch, and MJ’s eyes—borrowed from Bad—watch you as you look. Grab a copy and listen along with us. Questions, comments, recommendations? We'd...

4 months ago

53 minutes

Album Art-The Stories Behind Music's Iconic Album Covers

Blind Faith--Blind Faith

Send us a text What do you get when you mix Eric Clapton, a photographer haunted by his last shoot, and a spaceship that might be a metaphor—or something far weirder? You get Blind Faith—a band, an album, and an album cover that still makes people squirm. In this episode, we tell the story of how a chance subway encounter, an unrealized promise of a horse, and a very different 1969 sensibility led to one of rock’s most infamous images. It’s a lot. Questions, comments, recommendations? W...

4 months ago

39 minutes