Grace Jones, Bob Marley make Billboard’s Best Album Covers of All Time
Grace Jones’s iconic 1985 'Island Life' album cover and Bob Marley and the Wailers’ 1976 'Rastaman Vibration' album cover are among Billboard Magazine’s list of the Best Album Covers of All Time.
They were ranked number 27 and number 22, respectively.
The Top 100 list was released on August 7.
Island Life’s cover picture is one of the most famous images of Grace Jones and was created by her then-partner Jean-Paul Goude. The impossibly graceful arabesque is a montage of separate images, following Goude's ideas on creating credible illusions with his cut-and-paint technique.
The picture was originally published in New York magazine in 1978 and subsequently used in the music video for Jones' hit single 'La Vie en rose'. It has since been described as "one of pop culture's most famous photographs".
The cover picture was featured in Michael Ochs' 1996 book '1000 Record Covers' and has been often imitated in works by other artists. The image was also referenced in Nicki Minaj's 2011 music video for 'Stupid Hoe', with Minaj mimicking the pose.
Released by Island Records, 'Island Life' is a best-of compilation featuring songs from seven of Jones’s albums. It features the hit singles 'I Need a Man', 'Private Life', 'Nipple to the Bottle', 'Demolition Man', 'My Jamaican Guy', 'Love is the Drug', 'Pull up to the Bumper', 'Sex Drive', and 'Slave to the Rhythm'.
The Island Life album has been certified gold in the UK and has sold more than 200,000 in the US.
The Neville Garrick-designed cover to 'Rastaman Vibration' saw Garrick applying earthy watercolours to a Xeroxed photo of Marley – his hand raised thoughtfully to his chin as he looked off into the distance — and placed it against a burlap sack background.
Emphasising the idea of Marley as an everyman activist for Rastafarianism, images like this one went a long way toward establishing the iconography of Marley that continues to this day.
'Rastaman Vibration' became the first top 10 album on the Billboard 200 albums chart for Bob Marley and the Wailers when it was released in 1976. The album contains the Billboard Hot 100 charting single 'Roots, Rock, Reggae', Marley’s biggest song to date in the US, peaking at number 51.
The album has been certified gold in the US and the UK.
Among the other album covers making the Billboard list are 'Young, Gifted and Black' by Aretha Franklin, 'Lemonade' by Beyonce, 'Hard Core' by Lil Kim, 'Invasion of Privacy' by Cardi B, 'Whitney Houston' by Whitney Houston, 'Anti' by Rihanna, 'True Blue' by Madonna, 'What’s Going On' by Marvin Gaye, and 'Cuz I Love You' by Lizzo.
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