Musicians That Were Forced To Change Their Album Covers

Making an album is a huge, costly, time-consuming endeavor for solo artists and bands alike. First, they have to write the songs, then they spend months in a recording studio to make perfect, definitive masters of those songs. Then it's all mixed and engineered and — depending on the era in which it was made — committed to countless vinyl records, cassette tapes, compact discs, or streaming services. 

But just because the music is done, that doesn't mean the album is ready for public consumption. Every album needs a cover, some kind of eye-catching art that describes the feeling of the music inside. However, sometimes musicians choose art that just won't fly, picking or commissioning a photo or a painting that features nudity, violence, or any number of other things that may offend large swaths of people. And so, record labels force a change, even with major acts who earn tens of millions of dollars. From heavy metal mishaps to British Invasion blunders, here are some times when musicians were forced to change their album covers.

Back when they were starting out in the 1960s, the Rolling Stones were kind of the dangerous bad boys of the British Invasion, contrary to the relatively innocent Beatles. While the pre-drug-influenced Beatles sang songs about needing help and holding hands, the Rolling Stones played sleazy blues-inspired riffs as lead singer Mick Jagger predatorily strutted around the stage, demanding "Satisfaction." 

In 1968, the group released Beggars Banquet, an album which starts off with the provocative "Sympathy for the Devil." But that wasn't the big problem with the LP. Instead, the first cover really upset some people. Beggars Banquet was supposed to have a foldout cover (designed by Tom Wilkes) bearing the image (from photographer Barry Feinstein) of a graffiti-laden public bathroom wall. The release was delayed for months because higher-ups at the Stones' label, London Records, balked. The reason? Bathroom imagery in 1968 was just too suggestive. When Beggars Banquet finally hit record stores, it came in a plain white sleeve with the name of the band and the record's title written in a simple script font.

From his beef with Taylor Swift to releasing operas, Kanye West seems to do whatever he likes. Back in 2010, however, the future Mr. Kardashian stepped over the line with his label, the Island Def Jam Music Group. On October 17 of that year, West tweeted that he was adding the last bits to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy before its scheduled November release. Later that day, West announced via Twitter that his label "banned my album cover!!!!!" from an American release. The rapper subsequently shared that supposedly cursed image — an illustration by artist George Condo of a naked West hanging out on a blue couch, with a naked, armless angel/woman hybrid with a polka dot tail sitting astride his lap.

According to an anonymous Island Def Jam source in a Los Angeles Times report, the label greatly persuaded West to use a different picture, but if he wanted to use his original pick, "the label would stand behind him." That Island Def Jam source added that the company was afraid such graphic imagery would lead to stores like Best Buy and Walmart refusing to stock the CD. Condo later told the The New Yorker that West actually wanted a ban, as it would be an effective publicity stunt to drive sales. While Walmart ultimately had no problem with the cover, other stores did, and they stocked an alternate version of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, bearing the image of a ballet dancer.

For millions, the '80s were a sleazy time, defined by the loud, hard-partying, and degenerate ways of bands like Motley Crüe, Whitesnake, and Bon Jovi. Formed in the early '80s in New Jersey as a pop rock band, Bon Jovi evolved into one of the era's quintessential, radio-friendly "hair metal" acts, heaping on the hair product but also catchy hooks in songs like "Livin' on a Prayer" and "You Give Love a Bad Name." 

Both of those tunes appear on Bon Jovi's third album and commercial breakthrough, Slippery When Wet. Proving their '80s sleaze bona fides, the band got the LP name after visiting a Vancouver strip club that featured dancers showering on stage. It behooved these musicians, then, to represent that vibe on the album cover. Slippery When Wet initially came in a sleeve featuring a picture of a model in a T-shirt bearing the words "slippery when wet," and that T-shirt was soaking wet and laden with strategically placed holes. Anticipating that big stores might not carry an album with such an explicit cover, Mercury Records made the band change the sleeve just before the album's August 1986 for-sale date. The one that went to the printer featured a moist black garbage bag adorned with the record's title.

Joe Satriani's career is full of exceptions to the rule. When he broke through in 1987 with his second album, Surfing with the Alien, instrumental rock music was a niche genre, decades removed from its peak in the '60s, the age of lyric-free hits like "Pipeline" and "Tequila." But here came Satriani, an electric guitar virtuoso who didn't need a singer to propel his hard rock up the charts. Surfing with the Alien hit No. 29 on the Billboard album charts, while the title track and "Satch Boogie" both performed well on the mainstream rock chart. 

Surfing with the Alien was reissued in 2019 in a small run of just 3,500 copies for Record Store Day's Black Friday event. But this time, it featured an entirely new cover, with an artistic rendering of the headstock of Satriani's guitar. Gone was the LP's original, familiar album art that was a literal interpretation of the title, using the Silver Surfer of Marvel Comics fame. But what was the reason for the change? Well, with the rise of Marvel as a lucrative, Disney-owned, billions-generating commercial phenomenon, it's a lot more expensive to grab an image of one of its heroes in 2019 than it was in 1987. "Due to the ever increasing costs of licensing the Silver Surfer artwork from Marvel, we were forced to come up with a new cover," Satriani said in a statement (via Ultimate Classic Rock).

The 1980s weren't that long ago, but in retrospect, it was a very conservative time. Tipper Gore's Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) pressured the recording industry into slapping warning labels onto albums with "explicit lyrics," and some of the edgier acts of the time — particularly hard rock and metal bands — found themselves under intense scrutiny. For example, Poison's second album, 1988's Open Up and Say ... Ahh! is a mostly innocuous collection of radio-friendly hair metal and party rock, including such hits as "Nothin' but a Good Time" and a cover of Loggins and Messina's "Your Mama Don't Dance." And yet, in the wake of the PRMC, retailers (including Walmart) got cold feet about carrying the album because of its cover. 

It featured a model, dressed up like some kind of demonic cat, sticking out a supremely long and pointed tongue. To appease store chains, Enigma Records offered a (barely) edited version of Open Up and Say ... Ahh!, with rough-edged black boxes covering up the tongue (as well as everything else but the model's eyes). The new cover worked, and the album went quintuple platinum.