This post is part 2 of our best album cover series dedicated to the year 1980. Over the next few months we’ll be looking at the best album covers all the way from 1980 to 1989. The sleeve designs below were purely chosen on how well designed they are, and not due to the popularity of the musicians or how high it charted at the time. They are also not listed in any specific order. Some of these covers will be discussed in great detail in future posts. Think of this post as an introduction, or an overview, if you will, of the album covers released in 1980.
(Note: Did I miss an amazing cover of some obscure group? Let me know in the comments.)
6. The Associates – The Affectionate Punch
Another cover created by the aforementioned Bill Smith, this time for the Scottish new wave band, The Associates. The group recorded five albums, with The Affectionate Punch being their debut album. The album is only known to hardcore fans of the new wave genre and had little commercial success. It is regarded by some as a masterpiece (Paul Morley at NME). If you liked David Bowie’s Lodger, Scary Monsters and Super Creeps, and Let’s Dance, then this album is for you.
But let’s get back to the cover art and what a great cover it is. The saturated black tones accompanied by the bright blue text seems to leap at you much like the runner in the foreground is about to erupt towards the viewer. The runner’s impending launch into the unseen and dark race track seems fitting, mimicking the band’s career – always on the precipice of greatness, but never launching.

7. Prince – Dirty Mind
What is there one can’t say about the musical genius that was Prince? For one, he knew how to pick people to work with and always had full creative control over his albums. The photograph for this cover was taken by a close friend, Allen Beaulieu. Prince would often phone Allen at three in the morning to hang out and play music. Allen had found success with a fashion show shoot for the YWCA just a few months before Dirty Mind was to be released. Prince had liked the work and phoned him.
Allen was hired to take photos of the band and a poster of the singer. Prince apparently said the photos were really bad, but meant it in the way Michael Jackson means bad, as in good. The two collaborated on the album cover without any assistants during the shoot. Barry Walters (at Pitchfork) describes the album as “an unrelenting dance party, its kinky ambiguities blurring lines between genres and genders and pretty much everything else.” This also describes the cover art perfectly. Of all the photographs ever taken of Prince, I found this photo to be an excellent portrayal of the essence of his persona: a hypersexual, androgynous, and highly fashionable imp… who could probably get any woman (or man) out of their pants with a single glance.

8. Killing Joke – Killing Joke
Another great English rock band is none other than Killing Joke. This group influenced everyone from Metallica to Marilyn Manson to almost the entire grunge movement of the early 90s.
The album deals with various themes, from politics to pollution. The cover art illustrates the same themes very well, with a stark black and white image that resembles a scene straight out of some Soviet-era industrial disaster. The design is based on a photo taken by Don McCullin, depicting Irish rioters trying to escape clouds of tears gas flung at them by the British Army. One has to remember that many young people had lost faith in the government and that the fear of imminent nuclear destruction was very real.
Margaret Thatcher’s appointment as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom did not help and she soon become the ‘bane’ of every punk rocker’s existence. Penny Rimbaud of Crass fame stated: “I think Thatcher was an absolute fairy godmother. Christ, you’re an anarchist band trying to complain about the workings of capitalist society and you get someone like Thatcher. What a joy!”

9. Siouxsie And The Banshees – Kaleidoscope
This cover by photographer Joe Lyons captured everything that the 80s would later become very well. From the ‘kaleidoscope’ of the three primary colours behind the title (from which one can theoretically create any colour in existence) to the (bad?) fashion that would become the hallmark of the time.
It also featured a superimposed layer of two of the band members moving in the background. This, coupled with the warm light breaking through the window and the primary colours, might be suggestive of the content of the album. According to Paulo Hewitt (journalist at Melody Maker at the time) the album was “a kaleidoscope of sound and imagery, new forms, and content, flashing before our eyes”.
Joe Lyons is a UK based photographer and painter. Some of his other cover credits include: Siouxsie and the Banshee’s Juju and Tinderbox, Delta 5’s See the Whirl, Yazoo’s Don’t go and In your room.

10. The Alan Parsons Project – The Turn Of A Friendly Card
Man, this list is just riddled with British bands. The Alan Parsons Project is a prog rock group and this was their fifth studio album. The cover concept was done by Kevin Godley and Lol Crème. Both these gentleman had at the time split from the music group 10cc to form their own group, Godley & Creme. Their music career never really went anywhere, but they achieved great success later by directing music videos.
Don’t recognize the names? Well, they directed The Police’s video for Every breath you take, Duran Duran’s Girls on film and A view to a kill, Sting’s Fields of gold, Visage’s Fade to Grey, Yes’s Leave it, to name a few. They also pioneered the face morphing technique (later used by Michael Jackson in his video Black and white) with the Heartbeat video for King Crimson.
The cover design is quite clever and incorporates a king of diamonds into a church’s stained glass window. The warm light piercing through the window creates an almost halo-like effect, beckoning the ‘believer’ towards it. This can be interpreted in various ways. For instance, gambling or capitalism as God. Or, the way American capitalism has become interwoven with the protestant faith. It can also refer to religion as being a gamble or a game with no clear outcome. That is what makes this cover so interesting are the myriad way in which the symbolism can be interpreted.
This rounds up part 1 of 2 of our best album covers of 1980 (view part 1 here). Part 3 will be published soon. Want to be notified when it is available? Sign up for our newsletter here.