# The 18 Greatest Album Covers of All Time

> Pop-art collages, a working zip, a pulsar plot and a baby underwater. Some of these sleeves outlived the records inside them. Which will win?

*By YPB Team · Published July 30, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/the-18-greatest-album-covers-of-all-time*

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## Current results (3 votes)

1. **Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band** — 66.67% (2 votes · score 1000/1000)
   Peter Blake's 1967 collage of 57 photographed faces around the Beatles in satin uniforms, and the most imitated sleeve ever made.
2. **The Dark Side of the Moon** — 33.33% (1 votes · score 912/1000)
   Storm Thorgerson's prism refracting a white beam, with no band name and no title anywhere on the front.
3. **London Calling** — 0% (0 votes · score 699/1000)
   Pennie Smith's blurred shot of Paul Simonon destroying his bass, in Elvis-pastiche pink and green lettering.
4. **Unknown Pleasures** — 0% (0 votes · score 643/1000)
   Peter Saville's white radio-pulse plot on black, with no text at all on either side of the sleeve.
5. **Sticky Fingers** — 0% (0 votes · score 577/1000)
   Andy Warhol's 1971 Rolling Stones sleeve with a working zip, which scratched every copy stacked behind it.
6. **The Velvet Underground & Nico** — 0% (0 votes · score 500/1000)
   Warhol's 1967 banana, originally a peel-off sticker with pink fruit underneath, rated the greatest sleeve of all time by Billboard.
7. **Aladdin Sane** — 0% (0 votes · score 500/1000)
   Brian Duffy's 1973 portrait of Bowie with the red-and-blue lightning bolt across his face.
8. **Wish You Were Here** — 0% (0 votes · score 500/1000)
   Two businessmen shaking hands while one of them burns, shot with a real stuntman on fire.
9. **Bitches Brew** — 0% (0 votes · score 409/1000)
   Mati Klarwein's 1970 double-portrait painting for Miles Davis, jazz's most striking sleeve.
10. **Abbey Road** — 0% (0 votes · score 300/1000)
   Six frames shot in ten minutes on a north London crossing that is now a listed tourist site.
11. **Nevermind** — 0% (0 votes · score 300/1000)
   A four-month-old baby underwater chasing a dollar bill on a fish hook, 1991.
12. **To Pimp a Butterfly** — 0% (0 votes · score 300/1000)
   Kendrick Lamar's 2015 black-and-white crowd shot on the White House lawn.
13. **Led Zeppelin** — 0% (0 votes · score 300/1000)
   The 1969 debut's black-and-white photograph of the Hindenburg burning, with the band name in thin type.
14. **Parallel Lines** — 0% (0 votes · score 300/1000)
   Blondie in black and white stripes with Debbie Harry in white, 1978.
15. **Rumours** — 0% (0 votes · score 300/1000)
   Herbert Worthington's 1977 shot of Stevie Nicks and Mick Fleetwood mid-pose, in full Fleetwood Mac costume.
16. **Born to Run** — 0% (0 votes · score 300/1000)
   Eric Meola's 1975 shot of Springsteen leaning on Clarence Clemons, split across the gatefold.
17. **Are You Experienced** — 0% (0 votes · score 167/1000)
   Karl Ferris's fisheye photograph of the Jimi Hendrix Experience in yellow and orange, 1967.
18. **Never Mind the Bollocks** — 0% (0 votes · score 167/1000)
   Jamie Reid's ransom-note yellow and pink, designed to look like it was cut out of a newspaper.

Tags: music, rock, album covers, design