Sexy, provocative, playful, beautiful: from their earliest days, LP covers have been objects of art and fascination. This celebration of album artistry presents more than 350 of the best covers, and departs from the usual approach by organizing the images by visual theme. Many of us remember the iconic album-cover images that defined our collective and individual histories—such as the smoldering pinup girl on the Cars’Candy-O, the plaintive baby following a dollar bill through water on Nirvana’sNevermind, and Andy Warhol’s controversial zippered pants on the Rolling Stones’Sticky Fingers. From perennial classics to lesser-known gems, here is the LP art that shook, rattled, and rolled us through music’s early formative years. The thematic chapters include: Art:Ornette Coleman,Empty Foxhole; The Sex Pistols,Never Mind the Bollocks; Santana,Abraxas Death:Otis Redding,History of Otis Redding; Frank Zappa,Hot Rats; Ice Cube,Kill At Will; Metallica,Master of Puppets Drugs:The Beatles,Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band; The Monkees,Head; Thelonious Monk,Underground; Peter Tosh,Bush Doctor Ego:Frank Sinatra,No One Cares; Astrud Gilberto,Nothing Better To Do; Joni Mitchell,Clouds; LL Cool J,Mama Said Knock You Out; Bjork,Debut Escape:Johnny Cash,Orange Blossom Special; Bob Dylan,Freewheelin’; Peter Gabriel,1 (car) Identity:The Jackson 5,ABC; Pink Floyd,Dark Side of the Moon; Blondie,Parallel Lines Politics:Funkadelic,America Eats Its Young; Bruce Springsteen,Born in the USA Rock & Roll:Jerry Lee Lewis,Jerry Lee Lewis and His Pumping Piano; Clash,London Calling Sex:The Ohio Players,Honey; Robert Palmer,Double Fun; Pulp,This Is Hardcore Real World:The Allman Brothers,Brothers & Sisters; Bob Marley,Catch A Fire; Lucinda Williams,Car Wheels on a Gravel Road

This history of the LP is a must-have for any music connoisseur! When vinyl LP records took over the music industry in the late 1950s, a new era began. No longer bound by the time constraints of the shellac 78s that had been in use since the 1910s, recording artists could now present an entire album—rather than a lone three-minute single—on a vinyl LP, giving listeners a completely new way to experience their music. In recent years, vinyl has found a second life as an art form, collected and appreciated by music connoisseurs across the world. Vinyl: The Art of Making Records examines the origins of the vinyl format and its evolution throughout the 20th century, and also provides an in-depth look at how vinyl LPs are manufactured and packaged—often with striking artwork that makes them beloved by music enthusiasts today. Also included are four removable art prints, each representing a sample of album covers from the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.

Art for music: the album cover as medium Art & Vinyl is an exhilarating new look into the history of the vinyl record as a medium for modern and contemporary visual art. This beautifully designed and printed publication is the first book to focus in-depth on works of art created specifically for an album, composer or musician. With reproductions of more than 200 LPs from the mid-20th century to the present, Art & Vinyl traces the trajectory of how the record album has been considered by artists as material for a work of art. The book begins with Pablo Picasso's 1949 depiction of the dove of peace, printed directly on an audio disc. Significantly, the recording was Paul Robeson's Chante Pour La Paix (Singing for Peace). Art & Vinyl also includes works by artists as disparate and wide-ranging as Ed Ruscha, Marlene Dumas, Cy Twombly, Yoko Ono, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Barbara Kruger, Robert Rauschenberg, Sol LeWitt, Sophie Calle and Andy Warhol. Highlights include Gerhard Richter's extraordinary oil painting made directly on a recording of Glenn Gould's Bach: The Goldberg Variations (1984), as well as Allan Kaprow's LP How to Make a Happening (1966). Also featured are albums of original recordings by Joseph Beuys, Yves Klein, Jean Dubuffet, Christian Marclay and Wolfgang Tillmans, among others. Some of the better-known artists' covers for rock, pop and jazz albums featured here are Jann Haworth and Peter Blake's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band; Jim Dine's cover for The Best of Cream; Lee Friedlander's portrait of Miles Davis for In a Silent Way; Warhol's cover for Sticky Fingers and Robert Frank's Exile on Main Street; Mapplethorpe's classic Patti Smith portrait for Horses; Robert Longo's cover for Glenn Branca's The Ascension; Fischli/Weiss's Liliput; and Alec Soth's cover for Dolorean's The Unfazed. Art & Vinyl has been assembled over the course of nearly a decade by curator and collector Antoine de Beaupré, author of Total Records and founder of Librarie Galerie 213 in Paris.

Music lovers have been attracted to the distinct style and sleek sound of jazz since its birth at the turn of the century. The album covers collected in this comprehensive volume under the well-known Blue Note record label embody classic design and pioneering typography. Two hundred color photographs of the album sleeves, an informative history of the Blue Note record company, and a portrait of Reid Miles, who designed nearly 500 album covers, capture the integrity of this distinctive record label. Sophisticated jazz connoisseurs and young listeners alike, as well as those with an interest in style and graphic design, will enjoy this exciting book of jazz memorabilia.

Like a well-made playlist, the album covers in this volume combine to create a portrait of cool and culture desired by art, music, and record lovers alike. Art Sleeves is a time capsule of visual art and music culture as shown through the most important record covers designed by visual artists and graphic designers in the past forty years. This tightly curated collection of covers chosen includes works with significant cultural impact as well as collaborations that themselves created cultural fascination. The eclectic roster of visual artist-musician collaborations presented spans art and musical genres as well as generations, including Ryan McGinley for Sigur Rós, Kara Walker for Arto Lindsay, Peter Saville for Joy Division, Barbara Kruger for Growing Up Skipper, Jeff Koons for Lady Gaga, Tauba Auerbach for Glasser, and Stanley Donwood for Radiohead, to name a few. From postmodernist paintings and minimalism to collage and photography, as well as New Wave, emo, pop, and punk, the albums chosen present a bright and rich visual and cultural history. This inspiring volume celebrates this long creative tradition of visual artist-musician collaborations and, just like a perfect album, it will be treasured by art, music, and record lovers alike.

A photographic look into the world of vinyl record collectors—including Questlove—in the most intimate of environments—their record rooms. Compelling photographic essays from photographer Eilon Paz are paired with in-depth and insightful interviews to illustrate what motivates these collectors to keep digging for more records. The reader gets an up close and personal look at a variety of well-known vinyl champions, including Gilles Peterson and King Britt, as well as a glimpse into the collections of known and unknown DJs, producers, record dealers, and everyday enthusiasts. Driven by his love for vinyl records, Paz takes us on a five-year journey unearthing the very soul of the vinyl community.

A series vividly exploring an element of music culture that has withered with the advent of MP3s and digital downloading. Vinyl records tell their stories visually as they do aurally, and the record cover - eye candy for the music lover - speaks a language rooted in the environment and era of the music itself. This volume focuses specifically on the strange and bizarre products of music's most eclectic and eccentric figures, whose visions were so absurd and grandiose they often extended beyond the boundaries of the recording and onto the covers themselves.