Taschen’s sexy record covers are hitting all the right notes
Taschen has been through 50 years of album art for its latest tome, ‘Sexy Record Covers’
Surprising, shocking, hilarious, and sometimes very sexy – what makes a good record cover? It is a question which has preoccupied musicians and artists over the last 50 years, with the provocative results now gathered together for the first time. Sexy Record Covers, published by Taschen, features lesser-known work alongside famous album art, including The Rolling Stones’ Under Cover, Roxy Music’s Country Life, and John and Yoko’s Two Virgins.
Album cover by Gruppo Irakere
The idea was sparked by record collector Eric Godtland in 2010. As manager for the Village People’s tour, he encountered eccentric and erotic records in markets around the world, laying the foundations for a celebration of the unexpected and the edgy.
Album cover by James Brown
‘When I begin any project, I look for a combination of visual impact, sexiness, originality, and humour,’ says book editor Dian Hanson, on considering the curation. ‘These international album covers have all that. The colours were mostly bright and primary, perfect for publication, the sexiness, often blatant nudity, was definitely there, originality was beyond my hopes, but the humour was what really grabbed me. I never imagined art directors across the globe were allowed this much frivolity. To be included, albums had to be genuinely provocative. A collector valued everything in his collection, and I had to be the mum, telling him, no, that isn’t really sexy; it’s just funny. Which was hard for me, because I love the funny stuff too.
Album cover by Spank Rock and Benny Blanco
Album cover by Hammond
‘When [the covers are] grouped together, the evolution of the genre is clear. Albums from the 1950s were more directly targeted to men, often tied to nightclubs, smoking, drinking and general concepts of “sin”,’ Hanson adds. ‘As the 1960s progressed, covers played off the allure of hippies and free love, with a (hopeful) gender-inclusive, everyone-loves-sex attitude. In the 1970s, the sexuality become goofier and riskier, and everything tapered off from the 1980s onwards. France, Germany and Italy produced the most sexy record covers, often far more daring than the American releases of the same records. Japanese record companies readily used European women on covers, but not Japanese women. I was never able to get a good answer for why this is.’
Sexy Record Covers is published by Taschen, priced £60, taschen.com.
Album cover by Big Pop Party Band
Bayern Pop album cover
Super Disco album cover
Wilding / Bonus album cover
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox.
Hannah Silver is the Art, Culture, Watches & Jewellery Editor of Wallpaper*. Since joining in 2019, she has overseen offbeat art trends and conducted in-depth profiles, as well as writing and commissioning extensively across the worlds of culture and luxury. She enjoys travelling, visiting artists' studios and viewing exhibitions around the world, and has interviewed artists and designers including Maggi Hambling, William Kentridge, Jonathan Anderson, Chantal Joffe, Lubaina Himid, Tilda Swinton and Mickalene Thomas.
-
Best of Design Miami Paris 2025: animal sculptures and musical ping-pong tablesDesign Miami Paris returns to the Hôtel de Maisons (until 26 October 2025): here are the Wallpaper* highlights
-
Sam Falls is inspired by nature’s unpredictability in living works for RuinartThe artist creates works that are in-between photography and painting as part of Ruinart's Conversations with Nature series
-
Michael Graves’ house in Princeton is the postmodernist gem you didn’t know you could visitThe Michael Graves house – the American postmodernist architect’s own New Jersey home – is possible to visit, but little known; we take a tour and explore its legacy
-
Jamel Shabazz’s photographs are a love letter to Prospect ParkIn a new book, ‘Prospect Park: Photographs of a Brooklyn Oasis, 1980 to 2025’, Jamel Shabazz discovers a warmer side of human nature
-
A life’s work: Hans Ulrich Obrist on art, meaning and being drivenAs the curator, critic and artistic director of Serpentine Galleries publishes his memoir, ‘Life in Progress’, he tells us what gets him out of bed in the morning
-
Ed Ruscha and Ruthie Rogers team up on zingy new cookbookEd Ruscha and friend Ruthie Rogers, chef and River Café co-founder, have teamed up on a cookbook with a difference
-
Thomas Prior’s photography captures the uncanny fragility of American lifeA new book unites two decades of the photographer’s piercing, uneasy work
-
Cult classic ‘Teenagers in Their Bedrooms’ captures the angst of being a teenAre 1990s teens so different? Three decades after its original release, this photography book by Adrienne Salinger has been published again, by DAP
-
Make the Booker Prize shortlist your new reading listThis year’s Booker Prize shortlist captures the emotional complexity of our times, with stories of fractured families, shifting identities and the search for meaning in unfamiliar places
-
How to be butch: Clark Henley’s sharp, satirical and playful manual is back in printThe 1982 classic, ‘The Butch Manual: The Current Drag and How to Do It’, full of tongue-in-cheek advice, is available once again
-
We are all fetishists, says Anastasiia Fedorova in her new book, which takes a deep dive into kinkIn ‘Second Skin’, writer and curator Fedorova takes a tour through the materials, objects and power dynamics we have fetishised