Best and Worst Album Covers of All Time
I have never purchased a vinyl record for the album cover alone, but it is a nice bonus when the artwork looks so good that it’s suitable for framing. One of my kids has one of the entire walls in his room covered in his favorite album covers.
One that stands out for me is the very first album I bought, Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. It has a cool animated painting of Elton walking through a wall wearing a jacket with his name on it. He’s stepping up onto a winding yellow brick road with a field of grass, bushes, and trees on either side and a sunset at the end of the road.
That’s an album cover that I consider one of the best. Now, Rolling Stone has decided to highlight all of their favorites. They’ve released their list of the 100 best album covers of all time. Many of these are great albums, and the album cover is equally great, in their opinion.
Rolling Stone’s Best Album Cover
The list includes The Beatles at #2 with Abbey Road. They call the cover “the ultimate Beatles portrait: a sunny day in London, a crosswalk, the world’s four most confident young men walking in line.” When I read this, I had to remind myself not to consider the music on the album itself, but only the album cover. I don’t think it’s their best album cover, but it’s iconic. What also makes it unique is that you can visit the location where the photo was taken. For the first time in my life, I was able to do that earlier this year and it was an awesome experience. During a trip to London, England that was the only must-visit spot on my list and it didn’t disappoint.
There are three Beatles covers to make the list, with Sgt. Peppers’ Lonely Hearts Club Band at #14 and The White Album at #23. I suppose they chose the latter because of its simplicity. It’s just white, all white, with “The Beatles” written and raised on the cover sleeve.
Some other iconic covers that made the top 10 include Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon at #4, Cyndi Lauper’s She’s So Unusual at #9 and Nirvana’s Nevermind at #10.
Also on the list is The Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers. I think this is one of the cleverest with an actual zipper on the fly of a pair of pants enlarged onto the entire album cover.
Rolling Stone’s Worst Album Cover
Rolling Stone also mentions some of the worst covers, with their 50 Worst Album Covers of All Time list. This list includes Billy Joel’s River of Dreamsand Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet.
I must disagree with “Slippery” being on this list. It’s iconic, it’s frameable, and when you think about the 80’s, this image comes to mind.
Top 10 All-Time Yacht Rock Songs Ranked
July is here and it’s prime season for Yacht Rock Songs. Time to sit back on your yacht, or ummm dingy, and listen to the smooth sounds from the mid-70s to the mid-80s, with temp hopefully right there as well. The seagulls cry the white caps slap against the fiberglass hull, and you hold your glass of buttery chard oh so gently while inspecting those bikinis. It’s a tough job, but somebody’s yachtta do it!
Yeah, But What The Hell Is Yacht Rock?
According to AllMusic, Yacht Rock is a broad music style and aesthetic commonly associated with Soft Rock, one of the most commercially successful genres from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. Drawing on sources such as Smooth Soul, Smooth Jazz, R&B, and Disco. Meanwhile, common stylistic traits include high-quality production, clean vocals, and a focus on light, catchy melodies.[6] The term yacht rock was coined in 2005 by the makers of the online video series Yacht Rock, who connected the music with the popular SoCal leisure activity of boating. It was considered a pejorative term by some music critics.
Furthermore, In 2014, AllMusic‘s Matt Colier identified the “key defining rules of the genre:”
- Keep it smooth, even when it grooves, with more emphasis on the melody than on the beat
- Keep the emotions light, even when the sentiment turns sad (as is so often the case in the world of the sensitive yacht rocksman)
- “Always keep it catchy, no matter how modest or deeply buried in the tracklist the tune happens to be“
So Who Is The Yachtiest Of The Yacht Rockers?
This is 100 percent my own opinion. Top Ten does not leave a lot of room for error. I consider myself a pretty solid Yacht Rocker, and quite the musicologist. However, in the rare case you feel I make a mistake and leave off one of your Yacht Rock favs, have my people call your people and we’ll get together off the coast of Island Beach State Park for some Sangria and Cheese, and a little Yacht Rock, of course!
By The By, Lovey, if you’re looking for the perfect Yacht Rock swag to rock this summer, check this article out!
Plus if you need a place to dry dock and yacht rock, here’s a spot that Yachts every Sunday all summer long!
