Which Are the Greatest Album Covers?

By Therese D.

Album sales are said to have been in decline over the past five years yet there are some album covers that have an enduring appeal. Britain's Royal Mail searched through thousands of album covers and carried out extensive research before deciding on a final list of what they considered to be the ten best designed album covers of the past forty years. From this list they created a set of postage stamps with which they kicked off the philatelic year in 2010.

Commemorative stamps are miniature works of art which bring pleasure to many people especially stamp collectors, and each one of this set of ten first class stamps is uniquely designed to show an album cover and a vinyl disc extending from the side of the stamp. Though these GB stamps are intended to celebrate the album cover designs as an art form, they also serve to highlight aspects of British music culture over the last four decades.

These design classics represent the best of British album cover design and were selected to cover a range of music genre including traditional rock and roll, glam rock and punk.

Since these albums were widely sold, the images on these postage stamps will be instantly recognizable by many for whom some of these bands are their personal heroes. They range from "Let it Bleed" by the Rolling Stones which was released in 1969 all the way through to "A Rush Of Blood To The Head" by Coldplay, one of the biggest rock bands of the past decade, the album being released in the summer of 2002. The cake depicted on the Rolling Stones cover was baked by Delia Smith, then an unknown but now a well-known celebrity chef.

The extraordinary image from Pink Floyd's final studio album, The Division Bell, featuring nine feet tall metal heads designed by Storm Thorgerson, is also included amongst this set of stunning iconic images.

See the full list of record albums depicted on these GB commemorative stamps at Therese D's website about kiloware.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Therese_D.
http://EzineArticles.com/?Which-Are-the-Greatest-Album-Covers?&id=3565327