List of Controversial Album Art - Nudity and Sexuality

Nudity and Sexuality

• The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Electric Ladyland (1968)
  • The intended artwork for the UK version of the album did not arrive in time to press the album, so a cover of naked women lounging in front of a black background was issued in its place. The US cover by Karl Ferris, which Hendrix had intended, has since become the official cover of Electric Ladyland internationally.
• John Lennon & Yoko Ono – Unfinished Music No.1: Two Virgins (1968)
  • The front cover displayed Lennon and Ono frontally nude, while the rear cover featured them from behind. Distributors were prompted to sell the album in a plain brown wrapper, and copies of the album were impounded as obscenity in several jurisdictions.
• Blind Faith – Blind Faith (1969)
  • The cover featured a topless pubescent girl, holding in her hands a silver space ship, which some perceived as phallic. Photographer Bob Seidemann used a girl, Mariora Goschen, who was 11 years old. The US record company issued it with an alternative cover which showed a photograph of the band on the front.
• Tinkerbells Fairydust – Tinkerbells Fairydust (1969)
  • The cover features a nude fairy whose buttocks are clearly shown.
• Mom's Apple Pie – Mom's Apple Pie (1971)
  • The cover shows a pie with a sliced removed, leaving a fairly obvious labia. "Mom" licks her lips and the missing pie piece 'overflows'. Due to the fact that the obscenity was hidden right in plain sight, it took a little while for people to become offended. However, after word got out, retailers demanded that Capitol Records do something about it.
• David Bowie – Diamond Dogs (1974)
  • The cover art featured a half-dog, half-Bowie figure painted by Guy Peellaert. It was controversial as the full painting clearly showed the hybrid’s genitalia, which were later airbrushed out.
• Roxy Music – Country Life (1974)
  • The cover features two models, who lead singer Bryan Ferry met on holiday. They appear wearing translucent underwear, with their pubic hair and nipples on one of the models visible whilst the other, who isn't wearing anything over her breasts, is covering them with her hands.
• Scorpions – In Trance (1975)
  • The album cover shows a woman smashing a guitar, with one of her breasts exposed. The album cover gained controversy and has since been changed so that the breast is covered up.
• UFO – Force It (1975)
  • The somewhat controversial original cover was designed by Hipgnosis, as were almost all other UFO albums of the 1970s. For years, the genders of the couple in the bath were unknown, and the nudity was on the verge of decency standards. The models were actually Genesis P Orridge and girlfriend Cosey Fanni Tutti, both later of the band Throbbing Gristle. The artwork was softened for the initial US release, making the loving couple in the bathtub transparent.
• Scorpions – Virgin Killer (1976)
  • This cover featured a photo of naked prepubescent girl, with her pubic area partially obscured by a "cracked glass" effect. Her pose and the title "Virgin Killer" added to the image's notoriety. The Internet Watch Foundation, a British non-profit group who provides content blacklists for major ISP's in the country, also notably blacklisted pages on the internet encyclopedia Wikipedia for featuring the cover on its article about the album. This block was later retracted due to technical problems which occurred as a result of the blocking mechanisms and due to the already "wide availability" of the image.
• Rush – Hemispheres (1978)
  • The cover art features a naked man walking across a giant brain. An alternative cover, which displays the "Rush Hemispheres" text printed in red and yellow on a black background, exists on some reissues.
• Crass – Stations of the Crass (1979)
  • One cover of this album caused controversy; it depicts a nude woman lying in bed exposing one of her breasts and the right part of her rear-end.
• Scorpions – Lovedrive (1979)
  • This LP features a photo of a man and a woman in the back seat of a car. The woman's chest is exposed, and the man is pulling a large wad of bubble gum off of her breast. Apparently this cover offended some, as there is a version that features only lettering on the cover. The photo cover is the more common cover.
• Bow Wow Wow – See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang, Yeah. City All Over! Go Ape Crazy (1981)
  • Album cover show the band including its lead singer Annabella Lwin, who was 14 at the time, nude in the style of Édouard Manet’s Le déjeuner sur l'herbe. The Andy Earl cover caused outrage that it led to an investigation by Scotland Yard, instigated by Lwin's mother. and never appeared on UK and US releases.
• Dead Kennedys – Frankenchrist (1985)
  • A poster inserted in the original record sleeve, H. R. Giger's Landscape #XX, or Penis Landscape, was a painting depicting rows of penises in sexual intercourse. The band was brought to trial for distributing harmful matter to minors, and though the case did not result in any convictions, Jello Biafra's Alternative Tentacles record label was driven almost to bankruptcy.
• Guns N' Roses – Appetite for Destruction (1987)
  • The original cover for Appetite for Destruction, based on a Robert Williams painting of the same name, featured an opened-shirt woman, who had clearly been raped by a robot rapist, about to be crushed by a metal avenger. When every music video programme refused to play any music videos because of the cover, it was changed to show a rendering of a tattoo Axl Rose had on his forearm of the band as 5 skulls on a cross.
• Jane's Addiction – Nothing's Shocking (1988)
  • The album cover, created by frontman Perry Farrell, features a sculpture of a pair of nude female conjoined twins sitting on a sideways rocking chair with their heads on fire. Farrell said the image, like much of his artwork, came to him in a dream and he hired the employees of Warner Bros. to create the cover sculpture; after learning how to create sculptures by watching them closely, he fired the Warner Bros. staff and created the artwork himself. Farrell hired someone to help create a full body casting of his girlfriend for use as the sculptures. Retailers objected to the album's cover. Nine out of the eleven leading record store chains refused to carry Nothing's Shocking, and the record had to be issued covered with brown paper.
• Prince – Lovesexy (1988)
  • The artwork for this album showed a naked Prince in a devout pose, with a suggestively placed flower stamen nearby. Many stores covered the album in black wrapping, somewhat ironically, as Lovesexy was issued as a replacement for the hastily withdrawn Black Album, which had a monochrome black cover.
• Pixies – Surfer Rosa (1988)
  • The album cover shows a bare breasted woman in an black and white photo posing as a flamenco dancer, pitched against a wall which displays a crucifix and a torn poster.
• Red Hot Chili Peppers – Mother's Milk (1989)
  • The album cover features a black and white photograph of the band sprawled across the arms of a proportionately larger naked woman. A rose conceals one of her nipples while singer Anthony Kiedis' standing body conceals the other. Several national chains refused to sell the record because they believed the female subject displayed too much nudity. A stricter censored version was manufactured for some retailers that featured the band members in far larger proportion than the original.
• Jane's Addiction – Ritual de lo Habitual (1990)
  • Anticipating censorship, two versions of the disc packaging were created: one cover featured artwork by singer Perry Farrell including male and female nudity; the other cover has been called the "clean cover", and features only black text on a white background, listing the band name, album name, and the text of the First Amendment (the "freedom of speech" amendment of the U.S. Constitution). The "clean cover" was created so the CD could be distributed in stores that refused to stock items with nudity on the front cover.
• Blur – She's So High (1990)
  • The cover shows a naked woman astride a hippotamus, painted by Californian artist Mel Ramos. The poster and accompanying T-shirt, with the picture printed in full size, caused some controversy amongst students and advertisements for the single were banned in Hackney and the London Underground, and defaced elsewhere.
• Marduk – Fuck Me Jesus (1991)
  • The cover shows a naked woman masturbating with a crucifix. The album was banned in various countries.
• Nirvana – Nevermind (1991)
  • The album cover clearly showed an infant's (Spencer Elden) penis. Chain stores such as Wal-Mart, and K-Mart were highly offended and initially refused to carry Nevermind. However eventually due to such high demand, Nirvana compromised and put a sticker that read "Featuring 'Smells Like Teen Spirit', 'Come As You Are' and 'Lithium'" over the genitals. Nirvana saw continued controversy for their next album, In Utero.
• Tad – 8-Way Santa (1991)
  • The original cover featured a picture of a man fondling a woman's breast. Tad ran into legal trouble after the man and woman featured on the album cover saw the record and sued the band. Sub Pop was forced to change the album cover to a group shot.
• Suede – Suede (1993)
  • The gender-ambiguous cover art provoked controversy in the press, prompting Anderson to comment, "I chose it because of the ambiguity of it, but mostly because of the beauty of it." The cover image of the androgynous kissing couple was taken from the 1991 book Stolen Glances: Lesbians Take Photographs edited by Tessa Boffin and Jean Fraser. The photograph was taken by Tee Corinne and in its entirety shows a woman kissing an acquaintance in a wheelchair.

• Tool – Undertow (1993)
  • Photos in the liner notes of a nude obese woman, a nude man of normal weight, a cow licking its genitals, and the band members with pins in the sides of their heads generated controversy, resulting in the album being removed from stores such as Kmart and Wal-Mart. The cover was later replaced by a giant bar code.
• The Black Crowes – Amorica (1994)
  • The album cover's depiction of pubic hair, taken from an issue of Hustler magazine, caused controversy. The record company ended up putting out an alternative cover that blacked out the offending image.
• Eric Bana – Out of Bounds (1994)
  • The cover art features Bana naked from behind while streaking at a crowded Australian Football League game. He is reaching for the ball and his buttocks are covered with the message "contents may offend". The scene was created digitally, with the overlap of two photos. An alternative cover for the album was later released.
• Pantera – Far Beyond Driven (1994)
  • The album cover featured the picture of a drillbit impacting an anus. Copies of this album were banned and an alternative cover was created, featuring the drillbit impacting a skull. However, the remastered vinyl version contains the original artwork.
• Chumbawamba – Anarchy (1994)
  • The cover art features a close-up photo of a baby's head exiting from its mother's vagina during birth.
• Sugar Ray – Lemonade and Brownies (1995)
  • The cover art features actress Nicole Eggert posing naked. One of her breasts is exposed, though the nipple is covered by the white fur she is laying down on.
• NOFX – Heavy Petting Zoo (1996)
  • The cover art for Heavy Petting Zoo, by illustrator Mark deSalvo, depicts a man sexually touching a sheep. The LP version was even more graphic, showing the same man and sheep, except in Position 69. The title itself is a play on words, with the phrases heavy petting and petting zoo combined to suggest taboo human-to-animal interactions. The alternate LP title, Eating Lamb, suggests both regular eating and the slang use that means performing oral sex, and the cover art shows a human "eating lamb" in the latter sense.
• Marilyn Manson – Mechanical Animals (1998)
  • The infamous photo depicts Manson as an androgynous naked figure with breasts, six fingers and airbrushed genitalia.
• Ministry – Dark Side of the Spoon (1999)
  • The album's cover depicts a naked obese woman seated in front of a blackboard where the words "I will be god" are written numerous times. The cover generated some controversy when retailer Kmart refused to stock it in its stores. In the album's insert, the same woman covers her breasts with her hands, and her behind is also exposed on both the insert and back cover. Despite the controversy, no clean cover has existed.
• Puddle of Mudd – Come Clean (2001)
  • The cover featured a black and white picture of a boy with his pants down and with crack showing.
• The Strokes – Is This It (2001)
  • The original cover art featured a photograph of a woman's nude bottom and hip, with a leather-gloved hand suggestively resting on it. Copies of this album were banned and the cover art was changed to a microscopic close-up of particle collisions.
• Poni Hoax – "Poni Hoax" (2006)
  • Shows a picture of a naked woman sitting in a chair with an owl covering the nude area with its wing. The breasts remain fully visible. Later issues darken the image so only a silhouette of the woman is visible. Both editions are available on iTunes.
• Ted Nugent – Love Grenade (2007)
  • The original cover featured a nude woman on a silver platter, with her hands tied behind her back and a grenade in her mouth. The side of the woman's breast is visible, though the nipple is covered by her leg. Outcry over the cover lead to its being replaced with a hand grenade adorned with a pink ribbon.
• Sigur Rós – Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust (2008)
  • The band was originally going to ask Olafur Eliasson to create the cover art, but they could not come to an agreement, and ended up using an image by Ryan McGinley. His cover features four youths running naked across a road.
• Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010)
  • Soon after posting the cover image from his new album on Twitter, West said that retail stores will refuse to sell their album in the United States. However, according to the Los Angeles Times, the image was not censored. A source told the newspaper that there was only an effort to convince Kanye West to use another image, since some stores could boycott the album's release.
• Death Grips – No Love Deep Web (2012)
  • After being told by their record label Epic that release of their next album would be pushed from its original release date of October 2012 to the following year of 2013, Death Grips released the entire album for free download with a controversial album cover featuring an erect penis with the album title written on it in Sharpie.
• Tenacious D – "Rize of the Fenix" (2012)
  • The album cover shows a animated penis along with flames and fire in the background. The album cover was pixelated for iTunes, and in-store versions had a sticker covering the explicit content. Some stores sold the cover with no censor.