From the creators who brought you RuPaul’s Drag Race and million dooll listing this is world of Wonders wow report things that make us go wow hello everyone and welcome to this week’s edition of the wow report where we countd down the top 10 topics of the
Week that make us go wow wow I’m co-found of world of Wonder Fenton Bailey joined by my fabulous cohorts Tom Campbell our chief creative officer hello and James St Jes hello oh I didn’t know if he was with us there thank you you are you are so normally we count
Down the top 10 things of the week and occasionally we do like a theme episode and this is um we are gonna do the top 10 record covers that made us go oh my God life is worth living because back in the day record covers were a thing not
Perhaps anymore but we are we call them album covers on this side of the pond for those yes okay vyl there’s been some debate among us whether this will work or not so audience listening please uh let us know if talking about old visual things on the radio is really is really
Working for you I think it it stands if if we are eloquent enough if we are can elucidate our thoughts I think we can get this across I have no doubt all of us have the ability to gas on about an album cover for five minutes I I don’t
Think this is going to be a problem please only do three or four minutes oh God it well this is up to your editing skills then we’ll see if you can rise to the challenge I just want to equate this to the way on QVC they have to sell
Sents over the television so they have to come up with like metaphors that’s what this is going to be okay I’m sorry well I think it’s going fine so far and I think we’re already running over I don’t think you need to poo poo it
Before we even start I think that I want to get people on our side I want to be an underdog I want to bring them with us well okay lead the way with number 10 Tom number 10 it’s such a hard topic because you have great ones you guys
Have chosen but I had to do albums that were in my house because like Fenton you said you would buy you would save up your pennies you would go to the store you couldn’t buy all of them you could you’d buy one you’d bring it home and
You’d listen to it over and over and over again all you had was the front and back cover and if you were lucky it opened and if you’re lucky it had a sleeve with lyrics or something on it and I am and was and will always be a
Huge Linda ronat fan and she was she bridged that time or right before the time when rock and roll was very serious and she was a serious artist but part of her appeal was she was a sex symbol and instead of having to reinvent yourself every song for every video you know how
Like people have to like reinvent reinvent you did it with each album and she in N she had a long career in this in the in 68 she with the stone ponies in 74 she hooked up with uh producer Peter Asher who came from Apple Records
Who worked with the beat Beatles who had dated Paul McCartney’s sister and he did uh Heart Like a Wheel the album which redefined her it started making her like a huge cult queen of rock and then they did prisoner disguise but he must have turned her on to the artist known as Kos
John Kosh k h I know has many other accomplishments but he curated Linda’s album covers and the one that I’m going to point out the one that caught my eye first was an album called hasten down the wind as usual it had lots of really interesting uh
Non-commercial songs the hits on it the covers were that’ll be the day the Buddy Holly song but the album cover Linda is wearing remember the 70s were all about nipples not about boobs but about nipples and she’s on on the beach presumably in Malibu she’s wearing just
Like a strapless gauze white gown that prominently displays her nipples as she kind of coquettishly looks over her shoulder and there’s a horse behind her on the beach what’s going on H down the wind and it was just so sexual obviously I’m gay I was gay then but horse a horse
Is not a horse of course of course sometimes see I think you done a great job you’ve taken me the 70s I’m ocean Vibes horses I mean it it you’ve taken me nipples and nipples and it’s just it’s the it’s it’s this haunting photo that matches the haunting things and and
Linda of course reinvented herself or or I just not so much reinvented but kept exploring different genres and he was there so her next album which was the huge huge one simple dreams she’s like in her dressing room and she’s in like silken pajamas but it’s all Reflections
Because she didn’t want want to be a total Hoochie Mama but she still was sort of selling that and the inner sleeve was this incredible picture of her with like a flower in her hair like an orchid in her hair and she’s just looking at the camera and I had that
Poster and that was in the in the album and then she went on to do like uh living in the USA and there’s pictures online of Kos like putting her in roller skates holding her up pushing her down the street remember that great album cover where she’s in roller skates for
Back in the USA all him all different styles and then she did um her Punk album which was called uh mad love and it’s her in telephone it’s like black and white and her in her telephone booth looking scared and then he she went on and she
Did the Nelson riddle albums and those were like got more and more beautiful the first one was just her like in a part in a 40s party dress with a Walkman next to her and then they were so popular because no one thought that was
It was like a hat box that would open and reveal her coming off a plane with with with with you know poodles Standard Poodles and and and 40s Furniture so and then the last one I remember although he kept working with her was the trio album
With Emy Lou Harris and Dolly Parton and that was done as sort of like like cutout doll country uh country uh cowgirls so I’ve broken all the rules by talking about several no but like amazing that one artist would work with an with a recording artist over such a
Long period because they often switch it up and they get someone else to design the cover yet you wouldn’t I mean there obviously there’s a there’s a certain continuity or certain Integrity but they’re all different they’re all beautiful and each one signaled to us there weren’t there weren’t you know
Again there weren’t videos there weren’t all this kind of visual stuff there wasn’t even Entertainment Tonight elect remind people that which I know now is is out of date but there was no there was no People magazine it was just you know the world and and any kind of
Little nugget you could pull and those album covers and the Linda rosta album covers done by Kosh who I still I think is still with us um we should do a documentary with him amazing anyway yes he is still with us I was shocked and amazed because John kush’s work is going
To pop up in the show later on too all right let’s go on to number nine James number nine you know some album covers are everybody knows you know especially if you’re over 30 years old everybody knows the Madonna you know first album everybody knows the um Fleetwood Mac
With the balls hanging down you know I just have to say that you know exactly what I’m talking about Grace Jones there are these albums that everybody knows I have chosen for my first one an album that is a little more obscure and you might have to Google it to know what I’m
Talking about I I include it because it changed my life when I first saw this album cover picture it Saga Michigan 1981 teenage Jimmy Clark is at the record store at the mall and I’m flipping through the new albums of the week going through each one going
Through each one and I come across this album of klous Nomi clous Nom’s uh debut album and I have no idea who he is I have no idea what the hell I’m looking at it is this arresting image of this freak of this this man he’s got this
White white makeup he’s got these black Cy doll lips his hairline starts in the middle of his head and then goes up into these weird toughs these weird black test he’s wearing this oversized plastic tuxedo that is like an inverted triangle with a big plastic bow tie on it you
Just the image is so crazy and I asked the guy at the record store who is this he had no idea who it was but I knew I needed this album and I took it home I put the needle on the record and I hear lightning striking nugget had this weird
Falsetto voice he’s doing Opera to a new wave beat he’s singing in German it just blew my little mind wide open suddenly doors were opening in my head I started to see a future for myself where I could dress in in big plastic tuxedos I I saw
Makeup I saw men and makeup like the whole world just started tilting for me as I stared at this cover and I must have to this day I look at this album cover and just gasp at The Audacity Of how outrageous it was and how it just
But it fits who he was so perfectly there’s nothing affected about it he is just this bizarre Creature from the planet know me is what he said you know um some people may know him from his appearance on Saturday Night Live right because I once I had known who he
Was then all of a sudden he showed up on Saturday Night Live singing behind David Bowie with Joey Arius in the tube skirts and that just again blew my mind who is this where is this going on who are these people it just it was one of those things that just
Changed my life forever and ever CL know me the debut album look at it and I hope your is is in TR as I was James thanks for making the definitive argument that it’s nature not nurture that we are who we are and we find what we need to find
Just when we need it I love that it’s true it’s true you do remind me of clomi actually J I can see that empathy in a good in a good way it’s the shoulders moving on segueing number eight number eight David Bowie of course when we came
Up with this theme you both said oh V is gonna do David B and it’s true I’m not goingon to disappoint but the choice might be unusual it’s 1974 and he comes out with this album called Diamond Dogs now Bowie was already a sensation in England at least
Certainly lesso in America I guess he didn’t really have any hits in America he was cool right but but not that well known but there was great speculation about what he was going to do next he had done Ziggy Stardust and spiders from Mars and um previous albums Man Who Sold
The World and huny Dory and the Rumor was that he was going to do the 1980 floor show which was sort of inspired by George Orwells 1984 and everybody was just talking about it and then suddenly out comes Diamond Dogs and was like what happened to the 1980 floor show well it
Turns out there was some problem with getting the rights so he did a bit of a pivot and came up with Diamond Dogs this album cover is amazing it is one of the things I loved about the Golden Era of Recco covers was that they do the gatefold
Sleeves so you wouldn’t just it would be packaged as 12in but then it would open up so you’d have like just twice the space to do a picture and Bowie got this artist called guy Peart and Guy peel was known for he’ reled he’ released a book
A couple years before called Rock dreams and it was a collection of photographs a very kitchy beautifully almost you remember like hand tinting photographs how they have a weird color scent in the 70s they started doing airbrush art which was sort of similar it was photorealistic almost but the colors
Were always slightly off and slightly sort of kitchy and this book um rock dreams was a huge hit um and Bowie saw it in fact his friend Mick ja was going to do use guy pil to do the Rolling Stones it’s only rock and roll album cover artwork and Bowie sneaky as he
Was immediately got a hold of G went round the back immediately got a hold of guy PE because his album Diamond Dogs was GNA come out first so he beat the Rolling Stones to the punch ripped off his own friend MC Jagger’s idea anyway the cover is depicts as you might expect
Diamond Dogs David Boe lying down and he’s got his normal David Boe face on the head and then the rest of his body is this dog just lying there in a loou sort of way and it’s a very sort of futuristic dystopian landscape almost
Like in front of a sort of Peep Show but Bowie is a is a dog and the big Scandal was that they went to press and no one thought about what to do about the naughty bits the dog the dog’s [ __ ] and it was originally in the drawing and then they all freaked
Out like oh my God we can’t possibly release this and they had to recall a whole bunch of the albums reprint the cover with the the the dogs [ __ ] and balls airbrushed out the the Neutered version if you will the Neutered version that’s right but who are these people
Behind him these sort of crazy creepy people what is that well the whole album is very 70s it’s very conceptual it’s sort of a work said in the future Society has broken down no more big wheels and dogs the size of cats Feast on Rats the size of people it’s it’s a
Dystopian vision and sort of people are scurrying around in a debased state and though the the Diamond dogs are sort of running society and they’re out on the loose and the two ladies in the background are a female Diamond Dogs ‘re Diamond pies gu and what are the songs
From this album because I don’t think I know this album Diamond Dogs I think rebel Rebels on this album um when you rock and roll with me it wasn’t a hits Laden album but all very atmospheric and overpiece um now how old were you when this came out
Because that always seems to to sort of well I was 14 I was 14 uh my sister was getting married and my parents were so excited about it and throwing her lovely big wedding and and I was in the basement with my best friend Robert and
We had this album and we were just pouring over it and the most infuriating thing was even though it was a gatefold sleeve they didn’t print the lyrics so we spent days transcribing the lyrics putting the needle on the record writing it down typing it up because you know
What is going on what does it all mean and you open the album there’s this fabulous Montage layered citycape that’s very sort of broken down but very vague and and Misty I mean it’s real it’s a real milestone in dystopian cultural dystopian sci-fi I guess is what it was and I would just
Love to stay to see a movie a Diamond Dogs movie because that it’s just it’s just fantastically sort of grotesque anyway long story short mck Jag was really pissed off decided not to use guy peot on as the cover artist for their next album and um well that’s what I was that’s
What I popped up to say isn’t um David Bowie kind of after talking to uh Jane County on Night Fever David Bowie’s kind of famous for taking things from other people and using them as his own right yeah he was in an era before sampling he was a sort of sampler he was
Sort of Gaga esque I suppose before Gaga of course but just take this take that reinvent himself I mean what my favorite b period is his very uncol period when he was doing sort of lindsy Kemp miming and playing an acoustic guitar because he really was Naf and then suddenly
Became somehow incredibly cool and Diamond Dogs was a part of that sort of really cool it very Bleak very sort of um menacing the one right at does he do Aladdin San right after that or is Aladdin s earlier Aladdin s came right before yeah
Okay and Thin White Duke and all of that right came after okay okay now on list that I looked at for uh this researching this show Aladdin s was usually the highest David Bowie album cover just FYI yeah I think Diamond Dogs is better David the The Aladdin say cover is the
Zig the lightning bolt on his face oh right yes you open it up and he’s completely naked head to foot but it’s sort of all sort of silvery so you can’t see what’s going on down there I guess like Bo’s nudity and his bits have been a bit of a thing in his
Career well if you got it for it you know what I’m saying honorable mentions time right Blake yeah who goes first I had asked my friends on uh my followers on Twitter if they would give me some examples of their favorites and some of them that we got were Roxy Music I’m
Sure Tom you remember and Fenton with the throwing the javelins very Beauty in the beat the Goos in the towels in the sauna craftwork any Grace Jones album could could have the island life the island life Jean Paul good oh any yeah all the Jean Paul good stuff is fantastic
Culture Club karma chameleon just how beautiful he looked on that album cover blur remember with the dogs attacking the attacking dog yeah yeah that’s a good one I’ll I’ll have some more later on but those are just some of the ones that people gasp we’re counting down the top
10 album covers of all time that made us go well and we’ll continue with the countdown when we come back after the break here on the W report you’re listening to World of Wonders wow report things that make us go wow welcome back to the wow report
Fenton here with Tom and James and Blake we’re counting we’re doing a special we’re counting down the top top 10 album covers that made us go oh actually yes changed our lives that’s why not we’ve reached number seven number seven again just putting it in context because James mentioned this but
You would not only would you buy the albums that you bring home you got to flip through the albums at the record store and there are so many albums that I know that covers but I couldn’t afford to buy them and in my hometown Newport New Hampshire growing up 10,000 6,000
People there was the Johnson’s Ben Franklin the five and dine that had the equivalent of like three milk cartons of albums right and some singles on racks on the wall and if we were lucky we got to go to Claremont which was 10 miles away and it had like 10,000 people to
The grants which was a department store but you almost like became I became I would know all the album I know if they sold or didn’t sell the Jane Oliver album was always there anyway um this album uh was at a at at an explosive point of this Legends career and it’s the
1980 Diana Ross Diana cover it’s the album that has ups that Nile Rogers and Bernard Barnard Edwards did it’s got upside down I’m coming out classic amazing my piano and you know the seven this this was released in May of 1980 and as no one likes to imagine 1980 is a
Lot like the 70s you know like the first year of the new decade sort of the culmination of the decade but the 70s had been D she had been a huge star in the 60s supported by Barry Gordy and and Through The Supremes they had the the
The top shelf treatment better than any other girl group when he took her out of the Supremes made her a solo artist gave her every opportunity oftentimes people would have hits and then not have hits and they W they fade out he would give her another hit we get over here so Dina
Ross was you know lady sings the blues she was pop she was disco she was all these things but in the 70s have been about excess and and and it was about her it was teetering toward success looked like a Vegas act right it was beagles and everything on drag race now
But you know it was it was sequins and B big big hair and the the May gown and the feathers C yes and and roller skating dancers gone back to she has gone back to that there’s no doubt about it there’s no wring about that but what
Was so again in terms of recreating yourself in term it wasn’t the videos there were no videos it was the album cover black and white d a Ross wet hair white T-shirt rolled up in the sleeves tight tight jeans caught just looking at the camera like like expression looking
Like she has no makeup on just and just beautiful it was shot by scavo oh um there’s a legend which I don’t believe but I I’ll sell a legend which is she was she’ been shooting and shooting and shooting and shooting you know looking like di Ross beautiful and she was
Leaving and her hair was wet and he said wait a minute bend over you know like I don’t believe this for one second but I love the legend me too wait a minute bend over okay another another another thing I read is that that supermodel
That uh Gia is that her name the the crangi yeah yes that th those are her jeans that were borrow they were just sitting there like put on Gia’s jeans e they’re probably all the other thing about the album which meant that you were a big deal was if you opened the
Album all the way it was the full picture so you didn’t the cover was just you know her upper body and then you saw the jeans and and and I’m telling you the Zipper was going to bust and the again Dina Ross the thinnest most beautiful woman Earth she’s she’s about
50 pounds anyway but she’s just packed into it you know um you mentioned this a couple of weeks ago this person’s Al debut album cover reminds me a lot of this album cover and their career reminds me a lot of di Ross’s Beyonce’s Dangerously in Love with the chain link and the
Jeans nice okay know incredible influence on so many she’s wearing like this diamond like top and then the the photographer was like what if we just put you in jeans and she didn’t bring any jeans so the photographer lent Beyonce her jeans but so it’s kind of yeah I love it I was
Going to ask if maybe it was inspired by um Patty Smith’s horses cover you know the maple for picture of p Smith with the because it’s similar so black and white kind of like just oh we just took a picture like as opposed to the difference is though is that there’s
Nothing glamorous about Patty Smith there really isn’t you know but but even when you take Diana Ross out of her feathers and lame and big hair she is still the most glamorous woman on it’s gulo it’s a high fashioned photo it’s stripped down to next to nothing and
It’s it’s it’s it’s stunning it’s a piece of art the album also was incredible because you know Michael Jackson had off-the-wall out and he was about to become the biggest thing in the world but I I say in 1980 and 81 Diana Ross was the biggest star in the world
It was her end of her time at mowtown she would leave to go to RCA she was challenged on this album that she was chall you know Barry Gord always put it with people she had been hanging out at Studio 54 heard a lot of chic freak out
And so she wanted to work with them there’s a long story I’ll make short which is they were very young producers but n Rogers and Bernard Edwards did this really raw kind of mix and they sent it to mtown and mtown was like and they brought in Diana’s normal mixer you
Can hear both they both exist now and they’re both fabulous but they did have a magic thing they knew how to get like Diana’s breathless exciting um performance but that album I would say that was the peak of all of her work happened there and and the picture
Matches it and it’s and it’s called Diana from 1980 don’t be confused because every album di Ross is called Ross Diana Diana Ross Ross Diana Diana Diana Ross all right let’s move on to number six James number six this one is going to be hard for people to understand if
You weren’t there at the time oh good you don’t understand how iconic it was when it came out I’m talking about Duran Duran Rio okay and I Fenton is gonna have a problem with this and we’re gonna talk about that later on but um Patrick
Nagel was the the artist who did the the album cover and Patrick Nagel um was famous for being an illustrator uh for Playboy magazine throughout the 70s and 80s and his style is he does this incredibly flat two-dimensional beautiful women if you ever went to a hair salon in the 80s
Well that’s what I was just going to say I was going to say you know these pictures from hair salons and manicure nail salons in the neighborhood they’re they’re still there today if you’re walking down the street but the style is described as art deco meanss pop art
Means Japanese street style and the women like I said are two-dimensional white white face black black hair flowing so super flat isn’t it it’s it’s very flat it’s very flat but it’s it’s very post disco Post New Wave early MTV you can’t escape these Nagle images and
If you look up 1980s in the dictionary there is a Nagle picture next to it well not only 1980s but this album is came out in 1982 May of 1982 and it is the most May 1980 82 album of all time there if you say 1982 there is nothing more 82
In the world than this album cover and you know you are 100% correct 100% correct it it is so of its time it is so emblematic of 1982 and you’ve got to remember Fenton has said that he doesn’t really get Duran Duram but when Duran Duran came out is this is before Boy
George before Cindy L before Madonna for kajo before any of them and they were these five hot as [ __ ] guys who wore these bright red Versace suits or bright turquoise Versace suits or bright yellow Versace suits with the with the sleeves rolled up ripped t-shirts underneath
Which i’ had never seen and they all had these gray hair and the men wore makeup and they were just beautiful and they were heterosexual and they were romping through the jungles of Sri Lanka and they were on Yachts with models in the Caribbean and these videos were just
Colorful and beautiful and they were straight coded they were heterosexual coded but gays could love them too I mean there was no you could you could say you were a Duran Duran fan at school and not be clocked for being gay although all the girls knew exactly that
I was you were either lusting over John Simon Roger or or Nick and they each had it was like you know boy bands before boy bands because you had your favorite and the You could argue for hours over each one and the songs on the album Rio
Hungry Like the Wolf save a prayer for the morning after happy birthday to you that is not one of them uh the chauffer Girls on Film two minutes later because also the the videos were all done by Russell Mal right they were always in exotic locations and beautiful
Wom they’re in these fabulous outfits and exotic locations with beautiful models and the songs are so ingrained in our DNA in our pop culture DNA that everything about this album and especially the album cover just sang to me just really I just it it was just for
A little 16-year-old boy gay booy it was just everything that I’m not even a huge Duran Duran fan but that was an iconic album cover I think you may have picked the best album cover I’m I’m holding my Js until I hear the end I think you beat
Me this week James I just want you to know getting a little anxious as we do this countdown that there’s one album cover I was sure was going to be in this list that and James was like yeah yeah yeah I’ve got that one and I don’t think
He’s gonna do it I I’m just like well we have we have runner-ups coming up right okay so number five moving on to number five number five in juries do it yourself now I jury do you remember Ian jury he was a British kind of Cy singer
Um one of my favorite songs of all time hit me with your Rhythm stick hit me with your Rhythm or um reasons to be cheerful um and he was signed to a label called stiff records stiff records came the peak of punk stiff records had
Dvo um who else they have they had uh Rachel Sweet L Lena lovic Reckless Eric Elvis Costello Nick low uh the dam so they were sort of punk and Post Punk and stiff records got this guy called Barney bubbles to do all their design work and
Design all their covers I have to say I think Bonnie bubbles is the greatest graphic artist of all time and the do-it-yourself album The the and jur is do-it-yourself came out in 1979 and the theme the theme was do it yourself DIY why wallpaper you know tools so he actually went to crown
Wallpaper which was the leading wallpaper manufacturer of the time and this was when wallpaper was not cool it was na it was like something that belonged to the 50s and Victorian era the colors were all sort of pale and the designs were s of grotesque I think all
We have to do is look at the image of Benton Bailey right now to see what you’re talking about because Benton has decorated his home in these nav horrible images well moving that iside again nature versus nurture just that way if you ever loved wallpaper like I do there
Is no greater excitement than to go to a Home Depot or get one of those thick volumes of just swatches of wallpaper and that was Barney bubble’s idea for do it yourself he said print the album cover on different kind of wallpapers and they did something like 30
Variations of the same cover it’s absolutely it’s absolutely incredible not only that but um the lettering was like all like with like screws in the letters and then he created this character Tommy the talking toolbox I tell you it’s the best piece of graphic design I’ve ever seen in my life it’s
Like a toolbox opened up but it’s like a character and he was just always so endlessly inventive with his Graphics now hold on can you imagine having 30 album covers to you would tell that to the record company that you want 30 album covers and you would be laugh out
You would you would lose your your contract imagine the EXP right and they crown wpaper even came on board and they would go and wheat paste huge amounts of wallpaper they would even go to the Press offices of magazines and wallpaper their conference rooms overnight so that
They went in the next day and their whole conference room have been redone that’s fantas fastic yeah he was an amazing he also did the cover of Elvis Costello’s Armed Forces which is another fabulous fabulous album and and what he did there is he got so you you remember
That that era of black light paintings and and the very famous painting of the woman with the green skin prina Frank was it was it something like that so he got an artist to paint a picture of a her of elephants storming at the camera and he really was like James you talk
About clomi I think for me it was like a oh my God Naf stuff kit stuff can be really cool and tast is cool yes that whole inverting it and it was also Post Punk in the sense that it wasn’t like smash it up and in your face and it no
It was incredibly clever and thought out and sort of had this ability to take very kchy things or nap things and make them cool but also and make them menacing just that right there kitsy cool classic menacing sums up fentom Bailey to me right now this is one of
Those things where all of a sudden I’m getting a window into your mind into your formative you have to spell all those words with a K I think to make it but it’s funny because when you showed me when we were sending back and forth
The um the images we were going to use the album covers I saw that one and I was like what is what is I don’t even get it what is that because it was just one of the images and now you’ve explained to me and I completely understand why this album cover is
Everything everything everything and in fact there’s even a book reasons to be cheerful about the work of Barney bubbles Barney bubbles sadly took his own life um when he was just 41 but this is a cover I’m just holding it up and we’ll post on for um hit me with your
Rhythm stick I have no idea what’s going on but I am viscerally moved by it there it’s some sort of dog toy with a bit of string pulling all the bits together so that when you when you um on the first side of the of the of the single the
Whole thing makes sense but then on the back side it’s like what is going on it’s all sort of deconstructed and a little bit of Russian graphics and just very post just amazing work I wish he sounds like he needs a documentary too I think you’re getting all sorts of ideas
Here right a documentary no one will watch what a great idea I just sent you you guys a text of someone has a a collection of like all of these album covers on their wall oh wow right that’s the the one of the gas from Oasis said that you know in the day
Album covers were yeah poor people students you know that was our album covers would make great wallpaper today what let’s go all right we’ll take one quick break and when we come back uh continue our countdown any more uh honory mentions I’ll jump in
I I I have to again you guys are so classy and hip and I’m just the squarest guy but I loved olivan John and I I bought the albums I bought the greatest hits because when I was poor in New Hampshire I get but when I went to college there were secondhand record
Stores I’m now in Cambridge Massachusetts and you can go and buy for you know this is before CDs this is right before CDs and I would buy every living John thing and she’s just she’s sitting in water and her hair is up and she looks beautiful she’s wearing denim
And she has her arms crossed she’s just beautiful beautiful and the one that I love the most which is her Greatest Hits volume two she’s wearing a white cashmere her arms her AR one arm is over her head it’s shot from she’s lying down her back she look she looks down and
Then you see she’s wearing kind of like white yoga pants and when you open the album it’s the same image but her eyes are closed so you get to go like this and she okay I want to just I want to give an honorable mention to one of the most
Shocking album covers of all time that really just it what gives chills down your spine is the Yoko o Ono album cover uh shattered glass after John died in his his glasses a closeup of his blood spattered glasses just and overlooking Central Park on a on a table or you can
Make that or you can make a living John blank whichever whatever is your your taste that that’s the contrast between us James you deep moving cultural me just at home making Liv jumbling well stick with us and we’ll continue the countdown of the greatest album covers that made us go
Wow you’re listening to World of Wonders wow report things that make us go wow all right welcome back I’m Fenton here with Tom and James Blake we are counting down the top 10 album covers that made us go wow we’ve reached number four number four Tom has relinquish
Thank you so much Tom because I really wanted to talk about my favorite album cover holes live through this tell us about it describe it paint a picture it is model Leilani Bishop she’s shot by famous German photographer Ellen Von unworth who has you know shot everyone she said Courtney Love called
Me and we were on the phone for one hour I didn’t say much but listened Courtney had the idea God bless Courtney Courtney had the idea of reenacting the scene of the 1976 movie Carrie which I love too I just met her for the night before for
Drinks she was wearing a famous school girl dress we had some drinks and connected instantly so the album cover is you know a girl who’s just won a beauty pageant it looks like in the late 70s early 80s feathered hair yeah the ferah fcet hair do Tiara um smeared eye
Makeup one of the things that made me fall in love with Courtney Love is MTV News used to break in you know during MTV and it I didn’t even really know who Courtney I knew Kurt Cobain and she was talking about her new album This Album which tragically came out one week after
Kurt’s death anyway in this interview from before the album came out she said what I want to capture is the look on a woman’s face as she’s being crowned a sort of estatic um blue eyeliner kind of running um I am am I am I won I have
Hemorrhoid cream under my eyes and have adhesive tape on my butt and I had to scratch and Claw and [ __ ] but I won Mis Congeniality and that’s the essence of sickness in this world I’d like to capture and that also the way the the wallpaper describes Fenton and Claus noi
Describes James that describes who Blake is today cream on the face and butt crack way to the middle this w yeah this is largely considered H’s like breakout album they were actually more famous than Nirvana before never mind and then never mind came out and this is
What what’s the name of this album cover this is live through this this is wait to me the thing that I’ve never understood is to live through this and all the songs on it seem reflective of what she went through after Kurt’s death it’s so preent that she came that it
Came out and it was what she had to live through well yeah the the title of the album was really crazy but actually these songs are a lot about Lynn hershberg who had written kind of a slam Vanity Fair piece about her right right the picture where she’s
Smoking on the cover and Pregnant and they said that she was using heroin while she was pregnant yes I remember exactly she was Furious about that this is the album that everyone says Kurt Cobain wrote he didn’t um he sang backup vocals on a couple of songs that’s it but yeah this
Is one of my favorite album C oh one more thing I love the Barbie a typ face typ face for font yes the Barbie font another stand show us your T-shirt once again I know you’re gonna show the picture another song on this album is
Doll part so it kind of like fits in with the but yeah I want to be the girl with the most cake brilliant brilliant and you’re gorgeous you’re gorgeous all right is really working baby yeah I know I want I want both I want Blake and the cover all right moving on number
Three number three there were a lot of albums that I was going to choose I was going to do the Lori Anderson big science where she’s in the white suit with the white glasses I was going to do The Velvet Underground and Nico with the
Banana album I mean I had a whole I mean there go we could go on and on and on and on we could do this all day like how could you not well let me tell you why I could not okay because this album that
I’m going to talk about right now is one that it it doesn’t really sing to me the the the songs or anything like that but it was my brother and sister had this album and they would it was on the record all record player all the time
And talking about um Rolling Stone some girls out album okay and it’s um there were a number of variations of this album I think there were 10 or 20 of them like you know you were just talking about with Ian um but it looked like an
Old 1950s or 60s ad for wigs in the back of like national g National inquir or something like that and they were cheap wigs and then there were um peep holes the faces were cut out and underneath you could see the faces of uh MC Jagger
And Keith you know and and Charlie and you know Ron and as you pulled the album sleeve out each face got a different wig so you were looking at Mick Jagger wearing this wig then me and the mick wearing another wig then Wick marry another wig and it was one of those
Things that was so cheeky and so funny and so gay at the time that for me a little gay boy who wanted to wear wigs this was as close as I was going to get and I would sit and play with that because it was just it it was so pop and
So funny and there were you know probably about 50 different images and then you could get different variations of colors and everything like that honorable mention to another gay Rolling Stone album cover right here sticky finger yes yes yes yes which was shot by Andy Warhol it’s Joe delis Sandro’s bulging
Crotch a closeup of his jeans with the pan print coming out with the workable zipper that you could ZIP down ZIP down and you would see the underwear underneath Joe delis Sandro’s underwear and that I mean at Johnson’s Ben Franklin I didn’t buy that but the plastic was broken on the album so
People could unzip it you know we all wanted to look we all wanted to peep sorry can I just tell a very self-serving story here I was so inspired by that album that a local band when living in England came to me they were called art theft oh it was art
Theft records they came to me and said will you design our logo for art theft records so I was like okay I got Michelangelo’s David the statue and where the penis is the hole is where you’d put the record so when you stuck the record on a record player up PO the
Penis up records obviously my whole career a waste fabulous fabulous so so so those were that was a very um inspiring album for me and I you know I’m not a big Rolling Stones fans but some of their album covers are pretty spectacular yeah I think you’re right it’s like often
These covers eclipse the music right and and the the sort of images and the and the signifiers or or or what they mean to us is the music’s like okay it was great the cover I mean you know if you are a rolling song I mean there’s some
Girls I mean there’s a lot of really iconic songs on that album but it was that that speaks to me more of my sister’s generation and and that rather than mine the record is naked and the cover is drag there you go yes and the cover is very
Drag all right just another quick note on um that one never mind I just forgot my trying to thought keep that in absolutely oh my gosh number two number two yellows out of the blue I love a yellow and this is we’re going back to Kos again the
Amazing designer who did as Thomas saying so many of Linda Rad’s covers who also did the Abby Road The Beatles ABY Road cover had no idea who also did the cover for Hotel California oh my God oh my God just I get goosebumps just like visualizing that hotel in the magic hour
And Twilight it’s just it’s just and EO out of the blue um The Story Goes that the designer who worked with K was inspired by the world it’s a those fabulous jukeboxes and for some reason he decided to put the the that imagery those graphics on a Frisbee for his son and he
Was like just playing around in the garden and was like oh my God I’m going to take a wh turn it into a spaceship and this realize that’s what it was that’s what happened this became the logo first it was the logo for yellow and it was it was round Electric Light
Orchestra and it was round and it was more worldlet three but then for out of the blue the double album again gatefold sleeve created that logo as a spaceship and all came from him helping you know TW tweaking his Frisbee and this is one of those things where like it wasn’t
Just the cover it kind of defined the whole band it defined the whole band because when they went on tour they built this [ __ ] spaceship and they performed inside it and it was the peak era of pomp Rock and I think it also designed whole described the whole era
In the sense of space was the place you know encounters it reminds me very much of the same era of the Boston album cover where the band Boston is inside a spaceship and the Earth is exploding and you see Chicago and all the other cities and everybody’s leaving the Earth in
This and there was sort of something about the spaceships at the time but also this you we talked about how the Rolling Stones that like the album cover is better than the than the music inside but this is one of those ones which I don’t know which is better the every
Song on that album is just so iconic or the album cover they both work in tandem Wild West hero Mr Blue Sky Turn to Stone I mean like the other thing to underline that you you’ve mentioned but how important logos were sort of threedimensional logos for identifying I
Didn’t know what Boston looked like I didn’t know what eolo looked like I didn’t care they were sold by their logos the Carpenters had a logo Captain Neil they had these things that were identifiable and design one of the reasons for that though is like well as
We learned with journey and Aro spee wagon and Foreigner is that these bands were so ugly they were all so unattractive that it was probably best that you didn’t know what are you saying James that Video Killed the Radio Star is that what you’re saying what you’re
Saying that’s a whole other um hour of but typography and logos were such a study then you know and I’ll give you one more Kush thing because I haven’t done many honorable mentions and we’ll go to break but Rod Stewart’s Atlantic Crossing I’ll be honest with you the
Only Rod Stewarts on ever really like was do you think I’m sexy I kind of like that one but I kind of don’t care for the rest the version is okay but Atlantic Crossing have you seen that cover right now it’s so fabulous I’ve never seen sort platform
Boots bestriding the ocean and it’s one of those airbrush things and I swear to you it was it locked in my brain is like like I’ve got to go to New York and find James St James and CLA it was just like some sort of this is my last one because
That picture reminded me there’s a somewhat obscure album of The Pointer Sisters in the 70 when there was four of them it’s called stepping out and and the big hit was uh bet you got a chick on the side sure you got a chick I know
You got a chick on the side and it’s it’s a illustration of platform sneaker high heels it was so Urban and so designed it celebrated a time and a place and you know the poter sister came from Oakland originally and was fabulous and it had like a little the straps were
Open and cut out so when you took the album in and out the straps of the of the back of the straps of the of the platform high heel sneakers anyway you got to look it up it’s called stepping out The Pointer Sisters I have an
Honorable vention I just sent you guys a text it’s vampire weekend’s Contra it looks like a casting photo of a waspy white girl are you telling me that one of these albums is from the 21st century yes well I I’ll well I’m going to you know it’s okay because my second
Honorable mention is pretty much anything by The Cars oh my God all right we’re gonna take one more break then we reveal the number one album cover of old time that made us go wow you’re listening to World of Wonders wow report things that make
Us go wow welcome back to the W report I’m fenon here with Tom and James and Blake and we’ve been counting down the top 10 album covers of all time that make us go wow um we are about to reveal number one I just have to quickly say
This whole episode was somewhat inspired by hypnosis who we haven’t mentioned any of their work and who for me ultimately will always be the ultimate record cover designers with the Pink Floyd covers wish you were here uh Dark Side of the Moon and of course Led Zeppelin’s
Presence and many many many more but the other thing is you know what album covers did they really pushed the whole art of Prince because as we were talking I just remembered the very first time I got an album that had a shellac cover because
Album covers used to be flat and it was that whole printing process of putting a glossy layer on top that came in the mid 70s so I I just cutouts and foldouts and they really like a lot of his stuff really you know I was one of my
Honorable mentions was going to be the Rolling Stones best of album from the 1960s it’s sort of like the hexagon shape remember it was it wasn’t like a regular square album cover what I’m talking about yeah okay anyway but this this number one that that we’ve chosen
This is one of the rare times that Tom and I both came up independently with the Same album and we are in complete agreement Tom I’m gonna let you rip on this and then I’m going to talk about it afterwards number one is number one from
1965 and it’s herb Alberts and the Tiana brasses whipped cream and other Delights now I’ve seen this album cover but I don’t think I know any songs from it do you guys actually you do know all the songs because they were used on The Dating
Game this is what this is an album that was in a box of Records in our basement that my mother had in along with like you know Mel touret and Edy gour and Camelot like a bunch of albums from the 50s 60s that she didn’t listen to
Anymore but when I discovered it it’s this woman it’s a model named Dolores something I will have to look it UPS Dolores Ericson Dolores Ericson yes and she’s in she’s nude completely naked with 60s bont 60s eye makeup and she’s covered in whipped cream her boobs are
Covered in whipped cream she’s wearing a dress made of whipped cream she’s got a dollop of whipped cream on her head and it was so naughty and perverse and it titilated me in a way not because I was turned on by it but just the idea of
Being nude on a record C cover and I would drag all the neighborhood boys over and we would all gawk at it and I was the most popular boy in the neighborhood for about an hour every week because I would show them this new woman yes and you were not alone it was
I think the most popular album of the year out selling the Beatles out selling everyone at the time because Herb Albert and the TM brass was is kind of weird because they weren’t Mexican but they did this and and Herb Albert kind of wasn’t even really a band it was The
Wrecking Crew and Herb Albert like d doubling himself he had bought A&M records and they came up with this thing and it was a huge sensation and this supposedly she was a friend of Herb Albert in liny Hall his wife um and it’s not whipped cream for the most part she
Was in Gau golin is that it’s called or and and um and and covered in whipped cream because whipped cream um um cream regular cream gets sour in the bright lights it was in the shot in the Gage of the A&M uh gentleman who did all their art
And photography Peter Warf and the only part that was real whipped cream was on her head and then she does this little bit of like a her tongue out so subtle it’s so classy and it was the most erotic thing that existed and every parent had it they brought it home I’m
Sure Dad loved to see it because that also in every young boy spank bank as well I mean it was probably dad’s as well not mine I think the Rolling Stones one in college when when Shard came out boys for straight boys this was this was
The end all and be all no but it affected us all it made us all like like something’s going on there it’s a lot of come just come dren it’s like of course you were jacking off to it James St James I wanted to see her yeah you’re
Absolutely right but but in in college mid 80s when Shard came out with Smooth Operator I felt like was our Herb Albert and the Tiana brass it was something that was like cocktail music and you put no need to us like chill music Love Potion Number Nine is on it lollipops
And lemon tree what is it lollipops and lemon tree Lollipops and Roses um lady fingers you know these songs they’re very 60s era songs that you’ve heard a million times you just didn’t know that that’s a little Austin Powers too if you will you should listen Blake you’d get a
Kick out of it listen to it once at least I music you won’t be surprised I had never seen this album cover until just now like I was like what are they talking about I looked it up so learn something Tom I would have to ask you do you think
We’ve delivered on the premise of of talking about album covers I paid attention the entire hour which is not usually like usually I’m taking calls and doing emails so um while James talks no I loved it I guess we have to leave it to the audience to see if they they
Could see what we saw you know our words maybe we should do a sequel maybe we should do another album covers that made us go maybe we should just do a podcast where we talk about album covers every yes all right well that’s all we got
Time for thanks for tuning in thank you James Thank You Blake thank you Tom same time same place next week until then go out and do something that makes the world go Wow
source
