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It took two hours, a $300 studio bill, and a Boris Karloff impression to make a Halloween song that just won’t die. From Hollywood wannabes to a bubbling beaker of sound effects, The Original Monster Mash rose from the lab in 1962 and never went back in the grave. The album cover? A cartoony graveyard party so cheap it’s scary. Grab a copy and listen along with us.
Questions, comments, recommendations? We’d love to hear from you at Albumartthecoverstories@gmail.com or check our Spotify Song List with a song from each album we’ve covered.

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A psychedelic heart shaped like Africa, stitched together from five fractured faces, became the symbol of a 60s album that may have inadvertently launched the Doors. Forever Changes was Love at their breaking point—poetry tangled with paranoia, unity drawn from disarray, and a title that promised everything and nothing at once. Grab a copy and listen along with us. Questions, comments, recommendations? We’d love to hear from you at Albumartthecoverstories@gmail.com
or check our Spotify Song List with a song from each album we’ve covered:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2NrDU39yE9CJcHU6YJT8jj?si=Y1JAE4LWTDmKEDE9QGlB2A&pi=ly2xwE-ERRu-2

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What do a Russian mystic, astral travel, and a teenage tragedy have in common? Mastodon’s Crack the Skye. Behind the energy-enfused face of Rasputin on the cover is a story of grief, transcendence, and cosmic odyssey — a record that cracked open the sky itself. Artist Paul Romano turned the band’s most personal album into a surreal relic, equal parts Orthodox icon and psychedelic vision. Grab a copy and listen along with us. Questions, comments, recommendations? We’d love to hear from you at Albumartthecoverstories@gmail.com or check our Spotify Song List with a song from each album we’ve covered:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2NrDU39yE9CJcHU6YJT8jj?si=Y1JAE4LWTDmKEDE9QGlB2A&pi=ly2xwE-ERRu-2

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Raise your hand if you know the first album to sell a million CDs and outsell its vinyl twin. Okay, hands down—it was Brothers in Arms. But the cover? That dreamy blue sky with a floating steel guitar wasn’t planned at all. A jazz photographer snapped it on a whim while waiting for Mark Knopfler and a German painter obsessed with shiny objects slipped his own guitar fantasy onto the back cover, he’s still waiting on his £1 payment for the work, by the way. One guitar, two artists, and one of the biggest albums of the ’80s. Grab a copy and listen along with us. Questions, comments, recommendations? We’d love to hear from you at Albumartthecoverstories@gmail.com or check our Spotify Song List with a song from each album we’ve covered:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2NrDU39yE9CJcHU6YJT8jj?si=Y1JAE4LWTDmKEDE9QGlB2A&pi=ly2xwE-ERRu-2

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Who could be offended by a bunch of old white guys driving miniature cars in a 4th of July parade on an album cover? Nobody, right? So, how did this album end up with criminal charges for its art and a $45 million lawsuit by some of the guys on the cover? Well, there was a poster inside that album . It was a landscape and it started a cultural fistfight over art, censorship, and who gets to decide what’s “too far.” Grab a copy and listen along with us. Questions, comments, recommendations? We’d love to hear from you at Albumartthecoverstories@gmail.com or check our Spotify Song List with a song from each album we’ve covered:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2NrDU39yE9CJcHU6YJT8jj?si=Y1JAE4LWTDmKEDE9QGlB2A&pi=ly2xwE-ERRu-2

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Two kids in love, freezing their butts off in Greenwich Village, accidentally make one of the most famous album covers of all time. Bob’s grinning, Suze is clinging, and Columbia Records is loving every snow-slushed step of it. One roll of color film, zero Photoshop, no plan and a side order of romance that didn’t last as long as the legend. We’ve got the backstory on the walk. Grab a copy and listen along with us. Questions, comments, recommendations? We'd love to hear from you at Albumartthecoverstories@gmail.com or check our Spotify Song List with a song from each album we’ve covered:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2NrDU39yE9CJcHU6YJT8jj?si=Y1JAE4LWTDmKEDE9QGlB2A&pi=ly2xwE-ERRu-2

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What do you get when two Rolling Stones compilation albums go head-to-head—both released within days of each other, both claiming the band’s legacy, and neither fully endorsed by the band itself? Metamorphosis may be the weirdest Rolling Stones album ever released. It wasn’t their idea. It wasn’t their design. And it wasn’t their payday. It was, essentially, Allen Klein’s revenge—a stitched-together patchwork of demos, castoffs, and curiosities, released without the band's blessing but with Kafka’s curse baked into its title and album art. Think insects in suits and Brian Jones sharing an album cover with Mick Taylor—once and only once. Meanwhile, the Stones counterpunched with Made in the Shade, a sun-blasted hits album with a mysteriously airbrushed blonde on the cover and not a lick of actual shade in sight. Grab a copy and listen along with us. Questions, comments, recommendations? We'd love to hear from you at Albumartthecoverstories@gmail.com or check our Spotify Song List with a song from each album we’ve covered:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2NrDU39yE9CJcHU6YJT8jj?si=Y1JAE4LWTDmKEDE9QGlB2A&pi=ly2xwE-ERRu-2

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A busted alley. A borrowed gun. A camera pointed skyward at six young men who were about to scare the hell out of America. No budget, no entourage, no Hipgnosis, no Photoshop—just a raw shoot that captured the exact moment gangsta rap was born. Straight Outta Compton isthe debut album that rewrote the rules of hip hop and delivered a cover photo that dared you not to look away. It turned a forgotten L.A. suburb into a brand, a battleground, and a badge of honor. Grab a copy and listen along with us. Questions, comments, recommendations? We’d love to hear from you at Albumartthecoverstories@gmail.com.