The 30 Best Album Covers of 2014

Looking back on the albums of 2014, we have to admit that it's been a hell of a year.

Whether bold and beautiful images or simple, subtle signage, the last 12 months have produced some truly eye-catching and innovative visuals to represent a range of albums.

There were delectable debuts from artists like FKA twigs and Fatima Al Qadiri, replete with gorgeous album covers that deserve to be held in consideration for the National Portrait Gallery, as well as more solemn, heartfelt imagery adopted by the likes of YG and Young Fathers. Meanwhile, there were artists like Aphex Twin and Rome Fortune trying to convey not only a message but an idea to the audience—a contextualizing message which hits the viewer seconds before even putting his or her headphones on.

Take a look and see which of this year’s albums grabbed us by the eyeballs, and learn a little something about how they came to be.

Release date: May 2

Photography: Josh Olins

Art direction: Karl Lindman

Label: LL Recordings / Atlantic Records

Recording artist Lykke Li decided to convert the anguish from breaking off an engagement into fuel for her latest record I Never Learn. With a black veil and a stoic pose, she provides pretty clear indicators about her mindspace during the recording of the album.

Release date: July 29

Art direction: Nep Sidhu

Label: Sub Pop

For the cover of Shabazz Palaces' Lese Majesty, lyrics are translated into Arabic script and twisted into a tricky maze. Toronto-based visual artist Nep Sidhu achieves this type of hybrid Arabic calligraphy perfectly, paralleling the experience listeners have weaving in and out of the album's intricate lyrics.

Release date: Feb. 18

Art direction: Kreh Mellick / Daniel Higgs

Label: Jagjaguwar

“If you can’t be psyched about your own thoughts, then how are you supposed to have a meaningful interaction with anyone?” asked Angel Olsen in an interview years ago.

The album title Burn Your Fire For No Witness and its idyllic, hand-drawn album art can be read literally—you shouldn't act or be a certain way for the appeasement or the pleasure of another individual. The encouragement to stick with what you love and to ignore all the peripheries of life radiates throughout the album.

Release date: March 24

Photography: Wilfried Beege / Timothy Saccenti

Art direction: Beth Hoeckel

Label: 4AD

Mixed media artist Beth Hoeckel was approached by Future Islands to use one of her pieces for this LP cover. Known for producing dreamlike collages using grainy, printed textures and aged imagery from old magazines, Hoeckel’s work is surreal with strong overtones of nostalgia, as evidenced on Singles.

Release date: June 10

Photography: Christopher Cichocki

Art direction: Dusty Summers

Label: Sub Pop

Experimental rap group clipping. went for a clear-cut image to front their album CLPPNG, released earlier this year via Sub Pop.

The image is possibly a comment on how the musical outfit sees themselves—breaking through (or into) the hip-hop scene, as if it was a ring-fenced gathering. The warped net works effectively as an image, or possibly a portrait, but has been rendered useless in keeping intruders at bay. Enter clipping.

Release date: Aug. 26

Art direction: Hunter Loftis

Label: Warp

If a group of flamingos is called a "flamboyance," then that might explain why there are only two featured on the cover of Rustie’s latest album Green Language.

In an interview with Pitchfork, he reflected on his debut album Glass Swords, stating that he felt he “went kind of quite crazy...taking the piss with kitsch sounds and over-the-top silliness.” Rustie, whose real name is Russell Whyte, explained that he wanted Green Language to evolve from that by being a “more serious” composition of songs. And with that in mind, the album’s cover is so elegant, you can almost imagine the rest of this sentence being read in the voice of David Attenborough.

Release date: Feb. 24

Art direction: Unknown

Label: Hemlock

There's a chance that when coming up with the album cover for Untold's Black Light Spiral, and listing all the characteristic sounds of the album, that a piggy bank being destroyed by a brick was on there. There's no speculation that this photograph, paired with the neat typography, is a cracking, startling image in its own right.

Release date: May 7

Photography: Arvid Logan / Ari Marcopoulos / Jonathan Puglia

Art direction: Matt De Jong

Label: XL

New York at night seems to be the theme, inside and out, for the city's rabble-rousing rap group, Ratking.

Representing all the boroughs and the people within them, the bird's-eye sketch of an illuminated city, pumping with the electricity of human life, is captured perfectly on the album's front cover.

Release date: June 10

Art direction: Ricardo Edwards

Label: Mixpak

An honest reflection of Popcaan's peace-loving nature, this painting by artist Ricardo Edwards accentuates the warmth and honesty found throughout Where We Come From. The photo-realistic style employed by Edwards highlights Popcaan's focused gaze and thoughtful outlook.

Release date: Feb. 25

Art direction: Scott Mescudi

Label: Wicked Awesome Records / Republic Records

Kid Cudi's artwork for Satellite Flight: The Journey to Mother Moon​ continues a tradition of otherworldly, futuristic imaging that Cudi uses on his covers, except this time, he's less visibly on the cover and a mold of a body replaces what would otherwise be him.

Designed by Cudi himself, the starry silhouette is a stunning of an album cover that could just as easily be the emblem of an intergalactic space station.

Release date: Sept. 22

Photography: Desiré van den Berg

Label: Numbers

“So over a year ago, Redinho and I had fun throwing sand around while I was taking pictures of him after he had told me he was a fan of my work, and it became the cover of his new album. I'm indescribably proud to be a part of this, since I truly love his music,” said dutch photographer Desiré van den Berg. Little did she know at the time that her image of Redinho would be used to front his eponymous release via Scottish label, Numbers.

The result is an impactful portrait of the producer, with his features completely hidden by the fury of the sandstorm surrounding his face.

Release date: May 9

Photography: Li Wei​

Art direction: Matt de Jong

Label: Because Music

It feels redundant to say, but the cover for Little Dragon's Nabuma Rubberband really is a piece of art.

The fourth album from the Swedish band features a child weightlessly suspended in the air, with Gothenburg as the backdrop. It's an homage to Little Dragon's hometown, where they recorded the album, but also a more-than-apt visual analogy of the relationship between the cute and chilling moments that characterize the album.

Release date: April 1

Art direction: Christina Muddari / Nick Fulcher

Label: Self-released

Artwork for Goldlink's album The God Complex features religious imagery, which in many ways could be a comment on idolatry in its current-day form of worshipping the cult of celebrity. However, he provides some sort of clarification on the back cover with a quote—“The moment God is figured out with nice, neat lines and definitions, we are no longer dealing with God.”

Release date: Feb. 4

Art direction: Young Fathers

Label: Big Dada

Winners of this year's prestigious Mercury Prize, the artwork for Young Father's Dead album was inspired by a specific wartime picture they saw in Life magazine, and the result is a highly emotive one.

They said, “…There was this photo of a man whose village had just been pillaged by the rebels and the armies fighting. So he is crossing this river, which is very large. He is basically drowning and when he gets to the other side, this guy is holding him up. He is holding him for life, it’s not like it is an embrace. We liked that picture, and we wanted to recreate it…It worked with the name of the album, and actually that was before we had named it Dead. So the picture was more based on the feelings of the songs. It’s different from the original picture we saw.”

Release date: Oct. 24

Art direction: Nicholas Gazin / Michael Lukowski

Label: Mass Appeal / Sony RED

Give a hand (or two) for the second installment of El-P and Killer Mike's Run The Jewels project. Run The Jewels II has rough and ready raps over some outrageous beats, with an awesome illustration of their familiar dismembered zombie hands on a red background. Some covers don't need a ton of embellishing or re-transformation to get the musical message across. Sticking with their logo and doing a subtle change worked perfectly for Run the Jewels 2.

Release date: Feb. 24

Photography: Renata Raksha

Art direction: Brian Roettinger

Label: Loma Vista / Republic Records

St. Vincent's self-titled album has the singer sat upon a futuristic armchair as she looks right ahead, as though she's about to cast an important decision or a spell. It could just as easily be a shot from a fashion editorial as it could be a still from an Alejandro Jodorosky film, and perhaps that's why it makes such a lasting visual impact.

Release date: May 20

Art direction: Unknown

Label: Self-released

Levitation is magic, as seen on the cover of Pell's self-released album.

Floating While Dreaming depicts emerging rapper Pell in some kind of limbo between above and below, as he's suspended in the air and dreaming. The content of these dreams seems to have fueled a fantastic flourish of hallucinogenic hip-hop from the relatively new talent.

Release date: March 3

Art direction: Anita Marisa Boriboon

Label: i Am Other / Columbia

On the cover of his latest album G I R L, Pharrell Williams is joined by a group of beautiful (you guessed it) girls in bath robes. Released in the wake of the "Blurred Lines" controversy, Pharrell said that he felt the need to clarify and reiterate his respect for the opposite sex, stating “There's an imbalance in society, in my opinion, and it's going to change. A world where 75 percent of it is run by women—that's a different world. That's gonna happen, and I want to be on the right side of it when it does.”

Called a feminist “almost-concept” album by the Guardian, G I R L can be seen as Pharrell's attempt to “eliminate what he sees as an understandable degree of uncertainty over what his attitude to women actually is.” On the G I R L cover, women are literally on Pharrell's side, too.

Release date: Sept. 22

Photography: Aaron Rhodes

Art direction: A Hidden Place / Blue-Zoo / Daniel Swan

Label: Young Turks

Dedicated to the memory of his brother Daniel, Aaron Jerome aka SBTRKT released Wonder Where We Land in early October. Featuring contributions from Sampha, Koreless, and ASAP Ferg, it also features the mask of his previous self-titled album manifesting itself onto a mini mountain cat, held in the palm of a digi-mannequin hand. It was composed by Sampha’s anonymous designer and visual art associate A Hidden Place, and the contrasting colors combined with the calm hand placement puts this album cover near the top of our list.

Release date: May 5

Art direction: Shanzhai Biennial and Asger Carlsen

Label: Hyperdub

The porcelain portraiture on the front of Fatima Al Qadiri's Asia-inspired debut album is both delicate and strong—something thematically present in the album's sound, too. Formed around her detached, Westernized view of Chinese culture, the doll-like figure on the front represents skewed Asian motifs, which Al Qadiri explores sonically in Asiatisch.

Release date: May 19

Art direction: Joseph Martinez

Label: New World Color / Nature Sounds

The #1 choice from our mid-year list, Blu’s Good To Be Home still remains a strong contender for one of the strongest pieces of album artwork to have emerged in 2014.

“We wanted to make a day in the life of L.A. in an album. Being as true to who we are…We wanted to put all that into the record, and we wanted to hear all of that come out of the record,” Blu explained in an interview earlier this year.

The first double album from the rapper featured bold artwork from contemporary artist Joseph Martinez—a painted recreation of gang members gladly posing for a police officer in a disparate, almost sarcastic comment on the realities of police relations (and very real tensions) in certain areas of America.

Release date: Oct. 7

Photography: Zoa

Label: Self-released

This year saw another release from Rome Fortune and another piece of striking artwork to accompany it. The cover for Beautiful Pimp II was on our mid-year Best Album Covers list, but the cover for Small VVorld is something else entirely.

Shot by photographer Zoa, and featuring Rome and his lady friend being held up in the bathtub, the rapper explains how, “Small VVorld is an ideology I have that’s obviously a common saying, but at the same time, is the truest way to test if you’re on the right path of life, in my opinion. If you’re doing it right, ‘it’ being whatever you prefer to occupy your time, you will always run into powerful presences [and] entities that can push you further with that passion, or take it all from you. That’s what the album cover signifies in one image.”

Release date: March 18

Photography: Mike Miller

Art direction: Mike Miller

Label: Def Jam

The intro to YG's debut album My Krazy Life is a skit performed by his own mother, in which she tries to keep him off the streets, but judging from the black and white police mugshot used for the cover, that conversation didn't necessarily go as she planned.

After serving six months in jail on residential burglary charges, YG signed to Def Jam Recordings in 2009, and his debut album after years of mixtapes conveys his experience of incarceration to the audience.

Release date: Feb. 25

Art direction: Vlad Sepetov & Renata Raksha

Label: Top Dawg / Interscope

The "Man of the Year ScHoolboy Q managed to put together a powerful, critically acclaimed mission statement of an album in Oxymoron earlier this year, fronted by the man himself in a bright white balaclava.

ScHoolboy Q also became the second member of Black Hippy to release a commercial debut with Interscope, following Kendrick Lamar's good kid, m.A.A.d city.

Release date: Oct. 6

Art direction: Stephen Serrato / Shintaro Kago

Label: Warp

“The album isn’t about the end,” Flying Lotus said of his new album upon its release. “It’s really the beginning. It’s a celebration of the next experience. It’s the transition and the confusion. It’s not ‘Hey, you’re dead.’ It’s ‘Hey, you’re dead!'."

Take a minute to appreciate the weird and wonderful work that Japanese guro artist, Shintaro Kago, made for the mystifying release.

Release date: May 19

Art direction: Romare Bearden Foundation / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Label: Def Jam

Despite being an old, re-commissioned piece of collage art by Romare Bearden, the message of the piece is still one that resonates. The only posthumous piece of cover art to be featured in our top 30 list, Pittsburgh Memory—sampled whole for the LP’s cover—provides the visual tone for the sound of the album, which spans the group's reflections on racial stereotypes and their repercussions.

Release date: Sept. 19

Art direction: The Designers Republic

Label: Warp

The simultaneously subversive and transparent artwork for Aphex Twin’s Syro provided a refreshing subversion of the cover art medium. The artist chose to detail every single cost involved in the production of the album on its cover.

In an interview with Creative Review, Ian Anderson (founder of The Designers Republic and also responsible for previous artwork on Windowlicker and Come To Daddy) detailed the concept as being based on ideas suggested by the Warp label team in early discussions about the album's packaging. Of the three ideas they tossed around, a list showing the cost of making, distributing, and promoting the album came out on top.

“The intense, and ultimately pointless detail of the list really appealed to me…it was good working with James Burton and the team at Warp to stretch out this mantra that tells the reader everything and nothing about the creation of what I hear was an intensely personal album in the making reduced to the numbers of an album in the marketplace.”

Anderson also added how the design was intended to challenge consumers and question notions of value: “The stripped down, intentional un-typography, reducing the legibility of the bigger picture in its super detail, clashing with the inherent obsolescence of the pumped up format packaging, asks questions of the consumer that the content can’t alone.”

Hopefully we won’t have to wait another 13 years for more of Richard D. James’ subversions both musically and visually.

Release date: Aug. 6

Art direction: Jesse Kanda / Phil Lee

Label: Young Turks / XL

The angelic, mysterious figure that is FKA twigs caught the attention of the public this year for displaying explosive levels of artistic expression and energy.

Just before and during the release of her debut album LP1, there was a flurry of impressive song snippets and videos, and then the cherubic album cover was finally revealed. It was all over the Internet, pasted on city corners, and had an exhibition at Wallplay in NYC with accompanying images by Jesse Kanda. It's both a strong audio and visual presentation for what promises to be an exciting, long-term career for FKA twigs.

Release date: Nov. 18

Photography: ​Mick Rock (1972) / Steve Schapiro (1975) / Jimmy King​ (2013)

​Art direction: Jonathan Barnbrook​

Label: Parlophone / Columbia Records / Legacy Recordings

For David Bowie's most recent compilation album, he decided to provide not one but three covers—from 1972, 1975, and 2013. All three photographs show Bowie looking at his reflection, and with the title Nothing Has Changed, it makes the viewer wonder if Bowie really believes in that idea. If nothing else, he wants the viewer to consider their own opinion and identity, with the caption “Look in his eyes and see your reflection…”

Fans who bought and opened the box set and vinyl will notice that the text "Everything Changed" appears inside, presenting an artistic contradiction that only Bowie could ever set up so perfectly. And let's not forget that this release coincided with the touring museum exhibition "David Bowie Is," with another title that asked the viewer to participate in his thought process. Despite being a collection of songs that aren't new, the Nothing Has Changed covers are a perfect representation of Bowie's lasting relevance and impact throughout his career.

Release date: Dec. 15

Photography: Jenna Marsh

Art direction: Joe Perez

Graphic designer: Bryan Rivera

Label: Young Money

In an interview with the Fader, art director Joe Perez explained that this thumbprint cover option—for the Deluxe Edition of The Pinkprint—was the image that Nicki gravitated towards immediately. He added, "Makeup is commercial—it's materialism. It's a product that has great texture and is great to play around with." While we have yet to hear the full album, Nicki gave us plenty of gems to contemplate in our December 2014/January 2015 issue, including this image. Undoubtedly Nicki will make her mark in music and culture with her next album, and this cover is basically a forewarning.