This was the case with the cover of Nirvana’s “Nevermind.” The album artwork features a picture of a naked baby, swimming towards a banknote hung on a fishing line.Īt the time of the “Nevermind” release in 1991, the picture was seen as a criticism of capitalism.
Some album covers make an impression as soon as they hit stores. The retouched album cover omits the image of the genitalia, though Spotify persists with the uncensored version “Nevermind” (1991) by Nirvana We’re using this only to get attention,'” he told Blasting Zone the following year. But then, when we had to do the interviews about it, we said ‘Look, listen to the lyrics and then you’ll know what we’re talking about. The record company guys were like, ‘Even if we have to go to jail, there’s no question that we’ll release that.’ On the song ‘Virgin Killer,’ time is the virgin killer. Shame on me - I should have done everything in my power to stop it,” former band guitarist Uli Jon Roth told Classic Rock Revisited in 2006.įor his part, Rudolf Schenker, blamed the band’s former record company, RCA Records, for this aesthetic choice. Back then I was too immature to see that. “Looking at that picture today makes me cringe. Over the years, members of Scorpions have spoken out several times about the controversial “Virgin Killer” artwork.
The music press was also not particularly indulgent about the project, with Cracked magazine naming it the worst album cover of all time. The cover of “Virgin Killer” was censored and replaced by a picture of the six members of the band in some countries. According to the German hard rock band, it was supposedly a representation of the loss of innocence. One such offering is the artwork for the Scorpions’s fourth album, “Virgin Killer.” This features a 10-year-old girl completely naked, posing in a suggestive way. Rock music often courts controversy, as have some of the genre’s album covers. “The picture was to prove that we are not a couple of demented freaks, that we are not deformed in any way and that our minds are healthy,” the artist explains in “The Beatles Anthology.” “If we can make society accept these kinds of things without offence, without sniggering, then we shall be achieving our purpose.” This is more acceptable version of the album cover, compared to the original work deemed pornographic “Virgin Killer” (1976) by Scorpions
Why did Apple bother to blur out the one potentially offensive cover? Either it was too lazy to update the picture or it wanted to send a message for other artists interested in pushing controversial art. West's label Def Jam encouraged him to present alternatives to family-friendly venues like Walmart and Target (TGT), and nearly all the other options, including a depiction of a blushing ballerina, are as tame as a Jonas Brothers CD. More perplexing to the blurred cover decision is that Apple had a choice: There are actually five covers to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.