Album cover for Milano-Madrid by Miguel Bosé

When we say « album cover » and « Andy Warhol » together, everybody immediately thinks of the famous banana for the Velvet Underground. But the New York band is far from being the only one to proudly show an art piece from the famous Pop Art leader.

Well, of course, he created other design for the Velvet Underground and even then, it was common to see the style of the Pop Art movement’s artist on covers for John Cale. Both of them being friend, Warhol created for him some design in one of his less know style, the mixed assemblage of photography vignettes. Because Warhol was also a photographer and loved to present them by big sheet full of little vignettes looking like slideshows.

John Cale – The Academy In Peril

But besides the New York scene, it’s to a British band, which was dear to him, that Warhol gives a mythic cover: Sticky Finger. This band: The Rolling Stones, of course. This cover, which stirred a lot of debates, was followed by another: Love You Live, in an aesthetic far more pronounced and always in the purest Warhol style, Emotional Tatoo with a portrait of Mick Jagger.

The Rolling Stones – Love You Live

On other musical genres, Warhol also created covers for blues albums. For this music, the style is different from what we’re used to. We face simpler drawing, generally with black line and colours are put either with the background or by little touches.

Kenny Burrel – Blue Lights

And of course, there are these covers where we recognize immediately the Pop Art inspiration, with the photography and colour above it, giving it high contrast. Like we can find it on Aretha for Aretha Franklin, but also on the posthumous album of John Lennon. They were in the last creation of the emblematic artist of the Pop Art movement.

Aretha Franklin – Aretha