In the past, every album you bought came with 12 square inches of artwork. Artwork that seemed every bit as important as the music contained inside.

Here, we celebrate a decade of amazing album covers from the split-personality 1970s. It was a decade that began without direction, the ash of the '60s waiting to fall off the spliff. Then, somewhere in the middle, it sobered up. Adrenalised and angry, the end of the '70s was mad as hell and wasn’t going to take it any more. We chart the ch-ch-changes through the decade’s best album covers.

01. McCartney: McCartney (1970)

70s album covers: McCartney — What do the glacé cherries on McCartney's cover mean?

A few months after The Beatles split, Paul McCartney’s solo debut is a document of the bass player’s post-band breakdown. Flip it around and the back cover has Macca grinning, title set jauntily in Cooper Bold, but the front features an image that’s more difficult to decode. Then you realise you’re looking at cherries scattered around an empty bowl. Typical McCartney, mixing the sour with the sweet.

02. Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention: Weasels Ripped My Flesh (1970)

70s album covers: Weasels Ripped My Flesh — This parody of 1950s illustrations is pretty gruesome

The edgy album cover of Weasels Ripped My Flesh was commissioned by Frank Zappa himself. He handed illustrator Neon Park a copy of 1950s proto-lad mag Man’s Life with the words, “What can you do that’s worse than this?”. The resulting parody prefigured punk’s anti-materialism by half a decade.

03. Enoch Light and the Light Brigade: Permissive Polyphonics (1970)

70s album covers: Permissive Polyphonics — Permissive Polyphonics had a modernist look

Big band leader and unlikely innovator Enoch Light pioneered the gatefold sleeve in the 1950s, a full decade before Sgt Pepper. Known for brassy versions of modern standards, this album cover reflected a progressive sensibility. This late career example updates Blue Note-style typography with a splash of modernist colour.

04. Rolling Stones: Sticky Fingers (1971)

70s album covers: Sticky Fingers — The iconic Sticky Fingers album cover was designed by Warhol

In a letter to Sticky Fingers' sleeve designer Andy Warhol, Mick Jagger wrote: “The more complicated the format of the album... the more agonising the delays”. Thankfully, Warhol ignored the advice and created a design with a real zip attached, revealing a tasteful glimpse of white cotton briefs when opened. A true icon by a true icon.

05. David Bowie: Hunky Dory (1971)

70s album covers: Hunky Dory — Bowie's Hunky Dory cover had a retro film look

After years of desperate conformity, Bowie found success by embracing his weirdness. Like previous album The Man Who Sold the World, the album cover for Hunky Dory sees the future Thin White Duke stroking his long blonde locks and wearing a dress. Like a silent movie heroine in tinted daguerreotype, the typeface is the only real clue what decade we’re in.

06. Sly and the Family Stone: There’s a Riot Goin’ On (1971)

70s album covers: Sly and the Family Stone — Redesigning the US flag could have led to real riots for Sly Stone

Sly Stone had the Stars and Stripes redesigned for the album cover of his apocalyptic funk classic. “I wanted the colour black because it is the absence of colour,” he told Miles Marshall Lewis in 2006. “I wanted the colour white because it is the combination of all colours. And I wanted the colour red because it represents the one thing that all people have in common: blood.”

07. The Imperials: Time to Get it Together (1971)

70s album covers: Time to get it together — A surprisingly radical cover for the unsurprising group

Flicking through their output, the album cover for Time to Get it Together seems like an anomaly for The Imperials, with design and typography that’s much more radical than the music inside. (If you’re unfamiliar with them, they sound a bit like a Christian version of the Bee Gees.)

08. Yes: Tales from Topographic Oceans (1972)

70s album covers: Yes — Roger Dean's album covers for Yes transformed the band's look

No marriage of music and image says more about the early '70s than Roger Dean’s Yes covers. Before their collaboration began, Yes were a post-Zeppelin bunch of noodlers looking for an image. Dean drew them a logo and they were transformed into fantastic synth wizards; prog pioneers floating through mushroom-peppered landscapes. An acquired taste, but undeniably influential.

09. Faust: IV (1973)

70s album covers: Faust IV — This album cover for Faust features blank sheet music

In a decade readily identified with flamboyance, the minimalist album cover for krautrock group Faust's fourth offering prepares you for the difficult, contrarian music inside. Several versions exist, but the key image is always the same; two columns of blank musical staves. A bold mission statement and a striking cover.

10. Ramones: Ramones (1976)

70s album covers: Ramones — The boldness of the font reflected the band's boldness

Proto-punk rockers Ramones didn’t need the frills of fancy illustration or arch design to sell their three-minute anthems: they just needed to be their snotty selves. It’s telling that this is the only album cover in the line-up with a shot of the band on the front. The clean, bold type completes the declaration of aggressive intent.

Next page: 10 more iconic 70s album covers

11. ELO: Out of the Blue (1977)

70s album covers: Out of the Blue — Shusei Nagaoka created this album cover for Electric Light Orchestra

The Electric Light Orchestra are a group that grew into their skin, producing six albums before striking platinum with Out of the Blue. This is a sleeve that could only have been created in 1977, for ELO. Illustrated by Japanese album cover specialist Shusei Nagaoka, the airbrushed finish, sci-fi theme and glowing neon perfectly reflect ELO’s multi-layered, high sheen and sugary production.

12. Pink Floyd: Animals (1977)

70s album covers: Animals — Hipgnosis created some incredible covers for Pink Floyd

British art design group Hipgnosis enjoyed a run of superlative covers for Pink Floyd, designing the prismatic Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here’s flaming handshake. Enjoying a symbiotic relationship with a band at its peak, the cover for Animals is one from a series of amazing designs from the days when pigs really could fly.

13. Peter Gabriel: Peter Gabriel 1 (1977)

70s album covers: Peter Gabriel — Another Hipgnosis work, this cover used spot colour before Photoshop

Peter Gabriel produced four funky, angular albums between 1977 and 1982 sharing the same bare typography, the same eponymous title and similar, striking portraiture. Another Hipgnosis creation, the spot colour on Peter Gabriel 1 was achieved by layered exposure of monochrome and colour negatives. Photoshopping before Photoshop, in other words.

14. Sex Pistols: Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols (1977)

70s album covers: Never Mind the Bollocks — Bold and brash, just like the Sex Pistols themselves

With Vivienne Westwood’s styling, Malcolm McLaren’s marketing and Jamie Reid’s graphic design, we often forget that The Pistols were essentially a 12-bar rock band with sweary lyrics. Their one and only studio album benefits from an album cover that captures the combination of brash, trash, outlaw chic that made them famous for 15 minutes and influential for much, much longer.

15. Kraftwerk: The Man Machine (1978)

70s album covers: Man Machine — Futuristic art inspired by Russian designer El Lissitzky

Inspired by and adapted from the work of Russian designer El Lissitzky, The Man Machine sealed Kraftwerk’s image as android music makers. Melding the striking red and black of constructivist poster design with geometric typography, this was the first Kraftwerk cover to be as futuristic as the band themselves.

16. XTC: Go 2 (1978)

70s album covers: Go to — A design to sell an album that ranted about designing to sell an album

It’s a paradox that in filling the cover of Go 2 with a Courier-set rant about record marketing, XTC produced the first truly original album cover of the post-punk era. A striking, typography-led design, it comes as no surprise that it was a double-bluff. The cover was crafted by Hipgnosis, making the transition from old school to new wave.

17. PiL: First Issue (1978)

70s album covers: Public Image — The magazine-style cover for Public Image Ltd's first album

Public Image Ltd’s first album came just over a year after the Pistols' Never Mind the Bollocks. Intended by designers Zebulon to mimic the look of glossy music magazines, the random use of song titles in place of headlines gives a fractured finish to the album cover that fits PiL’s discordant musical style perfectly.

18. The Clash: London Calling (1979)

70s album covers: London Calling — London Calling drew on Elvis for rock 'n' roll inspiration

Famously aping Elvis Presley’s debut, London Calling’s second-hand typography and guitar smashing action reinvented rock and roll for the end of the '70s. Pennie Smith takes credit for the photography, but designer Ray Lowry created a work that was unlike anything in his canon. The combination captured The Clash as they briefly were and would never be again.

19. Wire: 154 (1979)

70s album covers: Wire — A modernist cover that speaks volumes about the music inside

Art rock never went away. The experimental core of Kraftwerk, Can and Floyd was smelted by punk, and Wire came out the other side. 154 is a jarring, at times ethereal entry in their early catalogue, with a sleeve that recalls Joan Miro and other modernist painters. Again, this is an album cover without type that says everything you need to know about its content.

20. Joy Division: Unknown Pleasures (1979)

70s album covers: Joy Division — Peter Saville’s cover just features one striking image

Almost 40 years after its debut, Peter Saville’s cover for Unknown Pleasures remains a T-shirt favourite for floppy-fringed hipster kids and their dads. The original album cover gave nothing away. There’s no band name or track listing, just this image, borrowed and inverted; the radio wave representation of a distant, pulsating star. Perfection.

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The 20 best album covers from the 70s