Top 20 albums with white covers, ranked
By Martin Popoff
On this day back in 1976, Led Zeppelin’s Presence vaulted to the No. 1 spot on the Billboard charts. And part of its success can be attributed to its white album cover, so here’s some more significantly white album designs! —Pat Prince
Yes indeed, Pat; here’s some more, indeed. Please enjoy our tour of 20 great albums with similarly predominantly un-inked covers. There were a lot to choose from, to the point where I felt the need to offer five, tidy honorable mentions, namely Blue Öyster Cult - Blue Öyster Cult, Frank Zappa – Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch, Cheap Trick – Dream Police, Buzzcocks – Love Bites and Kiss – Lick It Up. Actually there are two additional platters that deserve special notice, I feel. Those are Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run and Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Common sense would have these on the list and quite high up there, but my heart wasn’t in it. —Martin Popoff
20. Status Quo – Piledriver
We begin our tour in London, England. Status Quo scored a new record deal for their fifth album and suddenly there was a marked improvement, from a brown British blues boom identity to boisterous boogie heroes, hard rocking more often than not. I got this pretty much as a new release as a nine-year-old, likely into early ’73, based on the rockin’ cover photo, and there were enough headbanging songs on it — “Oh Baby,” “Paper Plane” and “Big Fat Mama” — to make me a fan for life.
Back cover of BOC’s 'Secret Treaties’ album
19. Blue Öyster Cult – Secret Treaties
I feel left outside of a secret club when it comes to BÖC. Despite having written five books on the band, I don’t gravitate to Secret Treaties, where it seems to be the top pick of many smart people. If I find the music clanky and dated, and hard and mid-range of recording, I nonetheless still revel in its lyrical density. Plus I love that white album cover (when, actually, most fans don’t), especially when one brings in the extra creepy factor of seeing those dogs on the front having been slaughtered on the back.
18. The Damned – Phantasmagoria
This is the first of The Damned’s two smooth and icy-cold Goth albums and it’s a daring shift they’ve executed, but one perfectly suited to Britian’s finest vampire, Dave Vanian and the two new guys in the band, Bryn Merrick and Roman Jugg. That leaves only the cuddly Rat Scabies, who drums and “is” completely different in 1985 to his chaos magician persona of old. But he adapts, and we can all revel in upscale Damned for as long as it lasted.
17. Captain Beefheart – Clear Spot
More like magic spot, because Captain Beefheart’s seventh album is his best-sounding to date, and it stands alone as a cross between gut-bucket blues Captain and Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller)-to-the-end Captain, skipping any similarity to the two commercial Mercury albums, which I also love. Plus there’s the touching, oddball romance of “My Head Is My Only House Unless It Rains” and “Her Eyes Are a Blue Million Miles.” I don’t think the band ever sounded more confident and comfortable in its clown shoes.
16. Fleetwood Mac – Fleetwood Mac
I mentioned leaving out Springsteen and The Wall, and I almost booted this one as well. But who can deny this seven-times-platinum pretty pop sister to Rumours? Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks arrive as a breath of fresh air, sweeping away the memory of the weird, lost and frankly pointless version of the band across the previous five albums. It’s every bit the record Rumours is, led into the pantheon of twee, small-song, origami perfection by “Rhiannon” and “Over My Head.”
15. ZZ Top - Antenna
I’ve got oodles of time for this somewhat forgotten album, although let’s put it in perspective — Antenna went platinum in the US, despite having no real hits. But it’s a welcome change of pace after the roughly uniform trio of albums beginning with Eliminator. You’d think the drum programming would disqualify it or bother me (I’m sure it bothered drummer Frank Beard), but somehow the grooves are massive, especially on storming hard rock classics “World of Swirl” and “Antenna Head” (I always like those “approximate” title tracks).
15. Rush – Grace Under Pressure
Here’s the coldest white album cover on this list (Is Wish You Were Here the hottest?), rendered doubly so when you find out that the band recorded it dark in the depths of a punishingly frigid Canadian winter. And they weren’t happy about it either, toiling with a producer in Peter Henderson that they weren’t getting enough feedback from. The end result is a claustrophobic, sullen album that really cheers up a lot of Rush fans!
14. Aerosmith – Draw the Line
This is a case of an album sent up fans’ rankings due to the presence of one song, namely the title track, which I usually put on lists as one of the greatest, best-constructed, most magically performed songs ever. The rest of the album (outside of uncharacteristic epic “Kings and Queens” and the angular “Bright Light Fright”) melts into a gluey mess, but that makes it weirdly conceptual, the concept being that the band is barely holding on, white-knuckled, a drugged disaster about to disintegrate. As for the title of the album and the white cover; draw your own conclusions.
13. Max Webster – A Million Vacations
This is the fourth of this superlative Canadian band’s five albums, and their lightest and most keyboard-bubbly. Still, the production is a clinic and it’s got two of the band’s most famed songs, the clumpy boogie-rocking title track and “Paradise Skies,” which summarizes all the pomp and prog and hookiness of this band in one jewel of a hit single—also look for the best use of a disco bass line ever, commandeered by the rock-solid Dave Myles. “Night Flights” and “Let Go the Line” were also sublime and pretty pop singles, highlighting the writing of keyboardist Terry Watkinson.
12. Led Zeppelin – Presence
The album that this pale imitation of a ranking exercise celebrates, Presence, is a bit of a kicking post for Zeppelin, considered lazy, tired, plagued by drugs and drink. But it was also loosely (and justly) framed as raw and guitary, and butted-up against its follow-up, In Through the Out Door, the contrast couldn’t be clearer. “Achilles Last Stand” is considered a classic, and as much as I appreciate it, it sounds a bit forced and repetitive. I prefer “Nobody’s Fault but Mine” in this department, but then again, with that one, the band is up to their old tricks again, rewriting old blues things.
11. Ted Nugent – Free-for-All
I could do without the guest Meat Loaf vocals, but other than that, Free-for-All is a skilled and detailed blast of American hard rock, and even metal, come “Street Rats,” “Dog Eat Dog” and “Hammerdown.” Grousers think Derek St. Holmes should have sung everything, but I love Ted’s voice, too — the title track oozes with personality. I still have a hard time with those dashes in the title, but for this exercise, I’ll relent.
10. Black Sabbath – Technical Ecstasy
Is this Black Sabbath’s best-sounding album? No one ever thinks about that because they’re too busy complaining about Geezer Butler writing about real world things. Personally, I love everything about this album, from Bill’s Beatles ballad up through the crushing “Back Street Kids” and then “Gypsy” and “You Won’t Change Me,” both spookier than hell. The cover’s not as white as I remember it, but I was always amused at how it reminded me of Presence, which was also designed by Hipgnosis, with both records emerging in 1976 and being the second to last of a set of eight, from bands who were essentially competitors.
9. AC/DC – Flick of the Switch
If this is your favorite AC/DC album we can be friends, ‘cos Flick of the Switch is bad-ass, for the hardcore, for the purists, but purists who don’t think it’s gotta be just Bon Scott or nothing. Having said that, it’s only my third favorite AC/DC album (after Highway to Hell and Powerage) but it’s the elixir of life, maybe even more of a distortion-soaked hard rock shock than anything they ever did in the ‘70s. Life don’t get any better than “Guns for Hire” and “Flick of the Switch” and album covers don’t come much whiter.
8. Kate Bush – Hounds of Love
Hounds of Love is widely considered Kate Bush’s best album, and it’s the most successful, too, at 1.1 million copies worldwide. It recently got a bump when the gorgeous “Running Up That Hill” got used in Stranger Things. In any event, I love it to death, although it’s my second favorite after The Dreaming, Kate’s weirdest. The remaining impression one comes away with across the decades is of Linndrum and Fairlight, but that’s not a knock — it’s hard to think of an album that makes brainier use of technology.
7. Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here
I know I did a whole book on The Dark Side of the Moon last year, but it’s probably my third favorite Floyd, after Animals and Wish You Were Here, which toggle back and forth. What always bothered me about both though, is that neither is particularly long or has that many songs, and even with the short track list, Roger Waters makes it messy and complicated. In any event, acoustic guitars never sounded so good as they do on Wish You Were Here. Plus the Hipgnosis graphics ‘n’ goodies provide much amusement.
6. Peter Gabriel – So
After two albums that were more mainstream albums than So, and two that were more unearthly than So, here comes So, with Peter drawing from the rhythmic identity of the third and Security but then writing sharper songs around that identity. “Sledgehammer” and “Big Time” are as cloying on the brain to me now as they were the first time I heard them and saw their bells-and-whistles videos, but the rest of the album just made you think Gabriel was the wisest person making music at the time.
5. Queen – A Night at the Opera
A Night at the Opera includes the greatest song ever written, in “Bohemian Rhapsody,” but the rest is choice Queen as well, especially the two side-openers, “Death on Two Legs” and “The Prophet’s Song.” The rest throws further light and shade, as we trip through the entire 20th century of music, with “Bohemian Rhapsody” amusingly serving as a sort of summary or metaphor of the album as a whole, like Six Minutes at the Opera.
4. Robert Plant – The Principle of Moments
For most of the late ‘80s and ‘90s I called this my favorite album by anybody ever. I still think that the atmospheric, rhythmic landscape Plant created, mostly with Phil Collins, constituted a breath-taking new direction for Robert, albeit not to be repeated. Plus I can’t think of a more exquisite example of polished songwriting prowess than “In the Mood.” Then there’s Robbie Blunt, mystery man, the Page turned. He’d kinda be told not to do Robbie on the next album and that’s it—he was never seen again.
3. The Beatles – The Beatles
The “white album” is my favorite Beatles album and it’s the whitest thing on this nutty list, with the message being that the album is both coverless and title-less. Not that we should be surprised by their skills, but the range is near infinite here, from some of the band’s heaviest tracks — including “Helter Skelter,” probably the first truly convincing heavy metal song — through to the likes of “Dear Prudence” and “Julia” and “Blackbird.” Plus they made up for the frustration of the embossed and numbered but otherwise blank cover with the graphic goodies enclosed.
2. David Bowie – Scary Monsters
Tough, weird, authoritative, innovative, Scary Monsters reflected al the best lessons from Bowie’s Berlin years, while its maker infused the proceedings with the creative vigor of New York City at that golden time. In parallel, reflective of the same geographical effects, Robert Fripp responds with his greatest guitar solo of all time on “Teenage Wildlife.” “Fashion” bothers me like a mosquito bite, but the rest is just the perfect persona for me of Bowie’s many.
1. Pete Townshend – All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes
Welcome to our winner folks, with The Who’s constantly bleeding heart following up what is nearly as good an album in Empty Glass, with this bright and pristine presentation of Pete raw with emotion, sort of bawling his eyes out on the inside but dressing up sharp as a tack to keep up appearances, and maybe to stop anybody asking him how he is. Chris Thomas produces and Simon Phillips and Mark Brzezicki share the drum duties — you already can’t lose — but then of course that’s just the start of this panorama of progressive Pete pop.
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